“Everybody cried on every single take” for the Brienne knighting scene

The most recent episode of Game of Thrones, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” was mostly about quiet moments between characters, several of which brought down the house as much as any battle spectacular.

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Chief among these was Jaime Lannister knighting Brienne of Tarth, a moment that was long overdue for someone as steadfast and brave as she. “For me, in that moment, she blossoms,” Kristofer Hivju (Tormund Giantsbane) told The Hollywood Reporter. “When he sees her smile for the first time and he sees how much this means to her? He really loves this woman. He starts the slow, American clap.”

"I really think he was very touched. You see him smiling like a baby. I think he’s just so happy. It was very touching when we shot it. Everybody cried on every single take. That’s the beauty of the show. You have this arc of eight seasons. This woman has tried to find respect and a place in the world, and suddenly, she accomplishes her greatest dream. After nine years of following this woman and suddenly she’s there, fulfilling her deepest wish? I think it’s beautiful. She did it so fantastically. It was brilliantly played by Gwen. It was a very touching day."

For Hivju, Tormund’s happiness for Brienne trumped the “rivalry” he had going with Jaime Lannister, whom Tormund had been watching ever since he arrived at Winterfell. “He’s picked up that this new guy, this ‘King Killer,’ he’s competition,” Hivju said. “It’s all about Tormund trying to push him down in order to push me up. But it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work! (Laughs.) It never works in life to push someone down to get yourself up. But it was hilarious. I had a lot of fun with it. We laughed a lot.”

So laughter and tears. Sounds like a fun day on set.

And Hivju seems like a fun guy, if you couldn’t already tell from his boisterous performance. He tried to keep each of the many takes as “Tormundish” as possible, from chugging that horn of mead with gusto (“Most of it went into my beard.”) to delighting in revealing the details of Tormund’s backstory. “The part where he killed a giant? That might be a lie. But the fact that he was nursed by a giant? I would say it’s about 67% true — and that’s nothing to brag about. (Laughs.)”

Finally, Hivju teased a little of what we can expect from this Sunday’s upcoming battle at Winterfell:

"I will say… I’ve worked a lot with [director Miguel Sapochnik], because we did “Hardhome” and “Battle of the Bastards” together. When you’ve starred in sequences like that, it’s like you’re climbing a mountain. Beforehand, we watch [pre-visualization] in a huge room. We watch a pretty good, animated version [of what we’re going to shoot], with lines and everything. Everybody was like, “Is this even humanly possible to pull off?” We knew we had 56 night shoots in front of us. We were going into two or three months of night shoots. That’s pretty intense, in terms of driving everybody crazy. (Laughs.) Miguel was the greatest commander in chief you could find. He literally had huge armies around him. He’s trying to make this all fit together. Some days, we were 900 people at lunch. It was just crazy. I haven’t seen the episode, so I really don’t know. But I think it will be pretty intense."

Here’s hoping Tormund makes it through.

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