“The Last Watch” director praises the “unsung heroes” of Game of Thrones

When Game of Thrones fans tuned into HBO’s The Last Watch on May 26, they may have been surprised that the two-hour documentary highlighted lesser cast members and crew more than the front-facing stars. That, of course, was intentional. Documentary filmmaker Jeanie Finlay and Thrones executive producer Bernie Caulfield decided to highlight the “unsung heroes” of the show in their swan song project.

Instead of following Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen) and Kit Harington (Jon Snow) around forever, the filmmakers gave us the stories of people like Andrew McClay (a long-serving extra), Del Reid (Snow Department Head) Leigh McCrum (coffee van Manager), Vladimir Furdik (stuntman/Night King), Sarah and Barrie Gower (prosthetics) and Naomi Liston (Location Manager).

Speaking with The Wrap, Finlay explains why they took this direction. “I think that Bernie Caulfield really was the driving force behind the documentary happening. And she was really keen on focusing on the unsung heroes, so the people out in the back.

"You know there is like 2,000 crew members working on Game of Thrones and the actors are a tiny, tiny percentage of that. So I made a choice to make the Kit and Emilia scenes [included in the film] the ones that also show the people that I was focused on outside of the cast, because [Kit and Emilia’s] stories overlapped with the characters I was following…You know, Emilia’s story crisscrossed with those working in hair and Kit’s story overlapped with Andy the extra, so it made sense to do that rather than have the cast in every single scene. Also, that was important to make something that felt distinctly different and had different voices. So I just was really on the lookout for people that may have never spoken before and smaller, intriguing people."

Of course, snow is a huge element in Thrones, so Finlay had to check in with the guy in charge of it. “When I found out there was a Head of Snow, I was immediately intrigued, because when you think of Game of Thrones, you think of snow and winter is coming.” Can confirm.

When it came to the stunt department, it was impossible for Finlay to separate stuntman Vladimir Furdik from his role as the Night King. “It just seemed too delicious a story not to tell,” she explains. “And I always wanted an extra and when I found Andy, I just knew I’d found the right person.”

“I was really interested in what it means to build a world and then how do you say goodbye to that,” Finlay said. She traveled to Los Angeles to work on ideas with showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss. Slowly, a unique storytelling structure emerged. Since there were seven kingdoms battling for the Iron Throne, Finlay says she “wanted to see if I could find seven unsung heroes in seven different departments and find an emotional way into Game of Thrones. And I was interested in something that was so different to traditional behind-the-scenes docs.”

The Last Watch doesn’t address the fan response to season 8. There’s a simple reason for that: it was made before the last six episodes aired. Shooting for the documentary wrapped on the same day as the last Thrones production shoot in July of 2018. “Yeah, it’s quite interesting,” Finlay said, “some people have said, ‘Why didn’t you address some of the things in the final season?’ Well, cause we didn’t see it finished.”

Finlay did give some of her thoughts on that topic later.

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Finlay is left with a lot of fun Thrones memories, including “watching [director] David Nutter pretending to be a dragon and growl when Kit and Emilia were kissing.”

See, we’re happy the documentary highlighted the unsung heroes, but we hope that shows up on the blooper reel.

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