Game of Thrones showrunners speak about the final season!

Well, this is unexpected. Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss have never been known for giving copious interviews, but after the final season of the landmark show wrapped amid a storm of controversy, their silence seemed especially noteworthy. Now, out of the blue, they’ve given an interview for Star Channel, a Japanese group of premium television channels that airs Game of Thrones in that Japan. The questions are in Japanese, but Benioff and Weiss’ answers are in English. Watch below!

The pair hit a bunch of points here, including pontificating on the role the show has played in their lives. “To have it become what it became, and to be able to spend not one year or two years but more than 10 years of our lives making it at this level, with the people that we got to work with, all of them, on and behind the camera,” Weiss mused, before Benioff picks up the thread:

"We didn’t have any idea that the show would be so big. Because when we first started going to Northern Ireland, where we shot the show, the customs officers would ask us what we were doing there. We’d say, ‘we’re working on this show,’ And they’d say, ‘What is it, Game of Thorns?’ And then by the third season, you’d see the customs guys — and literally this happened at Heathrow Airport — and the guy was reading A Game of Thrones, George’s book. And we knew that…something was starting to cross the threshold of public awareness."

I wonder when they knew it had become a proper phenomenon. Probably by the sixth season, when everyone was shouting “shame” and wondering whether Jon Snow was really dead.

Talking about season 8, Benioff singled out one scene for special attention:

"One that sticks out to me, because Brienne of Tarth has always been one of our favorite characters…The moment where she’s knighted by Jaime Lannister is just a wonderful thing in the story, and to see Gwen’s face in that moment…I’ve probably watched that scene four hundred times and every time it gets me. It makes me a little bit thrilled, it makes me tear up, so I love that scene."

I think the fans are with him on that one.

Moving on, Weiss remembers the time George Lucas stopped by the set of Game of Thrones and gave them some crap about having steel girders on the set rather than plywood ones of the kind he had to deal with back in the day. “I think he was kind of jokingly making fun of us for having it so easy in making our show when he had to put Star Wars together with spit and tape and glue.”

Weiss describes Lucas as “lovely” and “remarkable.” There’s some good footage of Lucas on the set in the video. There’s some good footage in general. I wonder how much more behind-the-scenes footage people haven’t seen.

Next up, the paid address the infamous coffee cup that showed up during the feast following the Battle of Winterfell. “I think in Persian rugs it’s tradition that you make a little mistake when making the rug, because only God can do anything perfect,” Benioff joked. Weiss picked up the bit: “That’s why I put the coffee cup there…Conscious, concerted statement of our imperfection.”

Benioff also gave a more mundane answer:

"We were concentrating so much on Daenerys and Jon Snow that we just didn’t see this coffee cup right in the middle. So, at first I couldn’t believe it, and then it was kind of embarrassment, because how did we not see this coffee cup in the middle of the shot? And then, eventually, it was just kind of funny…This one is just a mistake, and it’s kind of funny to us now."

Finally, the pair of them talked about the record 32 Emmy nominations the show picked up for its eight and final season. “It was kind of surprising?” Weiss said. “At least in my mind, I thought that the [previous] season would have been the peak and that we would’ve ended up with maybe a couple less, at best. I felt very happy for all of our team of people, all of the actors and all of the crew who got recognized…Each made us feel really proud of them and happy for them, because we know first-hand how hard they worked. We saw it every day for many years.”

I dunno if I buy Weiss’ surprise there — c’mon, man, of course the Emmys are going to honor the show in a big way for its final bow — but I am glad so many of the people from the show are getting recognized. “And it’s also just fun, because once people get nominated, that means they come to Los Angeles for the ceremonies,” Benioff said. “Ten of the actors are nominated and so many of the crew members, so it’s just a great excuse for everyone to get drunk again.”

The Primetime Emmy Awards go down on Fox on September 22, by the by. Hopefully we’ll get a bunch of tipsy acceptance speeches.

This interview is fun and lightweight. Since they stump for Game of Thrones at the end, I’m guessing Benioff and Weiss did it to promote the upcoming release of the complete series boxset, which comes out December 3? I wonder if they’ll do more interviews soon.

Anyway, before turning things over to you, I’d like to address the elephant in the room: no, Benioff and Weiss did not address the powerful backlash to the show’s final season, at least not here. And honestly, if that’s what you’re hoping to hear from them, I’m not sure you’re gonna get your wish. If they wanna talk about it — and it’s not a pleasant subject, so I can’t imagine they do — they can do it in their own time. We could get into the philosophical question of whether they “owe” it to Game of Thrones fans to lay out their thinking, but then this article would be 8,000 words long and wouldn’t come out until Sunday.

I’m sure people will do a responsible job of debating it in the comments. Please keep discussion civil.

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