20 takeaways from Fire Cannot Kill A Dragon, behind the scenes of Game of Thrones

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6. The show’s production had a reputation for pranks

If you followed Game of Thrones throughout its run, you may have heard that it was a prank-heavy set. That shouldn’t be too surprising, right? Big production, lots of creative people all doing this crazy job of creating the biggest show in the world…of course there would be pranks…

But the thing that surprised me when I read Fire Cannot Kill A Dragon was the sheer magnitude of pranks. There were…a lot.

There were perhaps no more notorious pranksters on Game of Thrones than the showrunners, David Benioff and Dan Weiss. They often sent fake scripts to cast members, including one trying to convince Kit Harington that Jon Snow would be disfigured after he encountered a wight in season 1, and he’d now have to “play a gruesomely disfigured character for the rest of his time on the show and would have to spend hours getting prosthetic makeup applied each morning.”

Then there was the time that the duo tried to convince their friend Rob McElhenney of Always Sunny in Philedelphia fame that Matt Shakman — the directed “The Spoils of War” in season 7 in part because of a personal recommendation from McElhenney — wasn’t working out. Weiss and Benioff kept the ruse going long enough that McElhenney started to seriously panic.

“When it got to the point where Rob [McElhenney] was thinking of calling his agent, we took a picture of us, Kit, Emilia [Clarke], and ten Dothraki all giving Matt [Shakman] the finger,” Weiss recalled. “We sent the photo to Rob, and it was beautiful.”

LOS ANGELES, CA – SEPTEMBER 18: Writer/producers David Benioff (L) and D.B. Weiss accept Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series for ‘Game of Thrones’ episode ‘Battle of the Bastards’ onstage during the 68th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards at Microsoft Theater on September 18, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Benioff and Weiss weren’t the only pranksters on set. Nikolai Coster-Waldau recalled giving the showrunners a taste of their own medicine by convincing them he had buzzed his head against their wishes. And Jason Mamoa apparently has some prank tales that “are maybe illegal,” which he claims he’ll take to his grave.

Still, there’s no denying Weiss and Benioff were the kings of that particular prank castle. They even went so far as to prank James Hibberd while he was interviewing them for Fire Cannot Kill A Dragon. But for that golden moment, you’ll have to read the book yourself.