From on-set romances to accidents that ended up being iconic television moments, Fire Cannot Kill A Dragon pulls back the curtain on Game of Thrones.
Last month, Penguin put out Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon: Game of Thrones and the Official Untold Story of the Epic Series. This book, by Entertainment Weekly’s James Hibberd, is perhaps the most in-depth look behind the curtain of HBO’s hit fantasy drama that’s ever been released…and it is glorious.
Functioning as both an exposé of all those nitty-gritty details we love as well as a celebration of Game of Thrones‘ incredible run, the book is a veritable treasure trove for the passionate fan. The internet has already discussed plenty of juicy tidbits, like that time Ian McShane punted his lunch across set, the fact that Ser Jorah Mormont was originally supposed to survive the Long Night, and the filming troubles that plagued the Dornish plotline.
Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon
But of course, those teasers only scratch the surface. Fire Cannot Kill A Dragon boasts over 400 pages of interviews, behind-the-scenes photos, and recollections from Hibberd, who had near-unfettered access to the show for nearly the entire production.
Hibberd got on the Thrones train early. Already well-respected in his field, when he joined Entertainment Weekly, one of the first assignments he asked to be put on was this strange little fantasy show HBO was cooking up. The rest, as they say, is history. Hibberd was there for the Red and Purple weddings, the Battle of the Bastards, the Long Night, Cersei’s walk of shame…the list goes on and on.
With Fire Cannot Kill A Dragon, Hibberd painstakingly recounts the history of the show’s production in a way that’s fun, intriguing and impossible to put down. There are a lot of fantastic bits in there, so we thought it might be a lot of fun to round up 20 of our favorites.
Hibberd’s book explores the saga of Game of Thrones in chronological order, and while we won’t be sticking strictly to the timeline, it’d be madness not to start at the beginning!
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1. Game of Thrones was shot in the same place where the RMS Titanic was built
After detailing the early meetings between showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss, A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin and HBO, Hibberd launches into a chapter about the show’s failed original pilot. There are all sorts of details here, as well as mysterious questions like: why was Tamzin Merchant recast as Daenerys Targaryen? (The interviews reveal only reveal that her role was “compromised” and that it just wasn’t working out).
One factoid that particularly surprised me was finding out was that the studio where Thrones did a lot of its indoor shooting, the Paint Hall studio hangar in Belfast, was in fact built on the same grounds where the RMS Titanic was built. In fact, the Paint Hall is part of a large development called, appropriately enough, the Titanic Quarter.
There’s something beautiful and a little unsettling about that, right?
“The hangar sits on a windy gray corner of the world, with cold, dark water lapping against a rocky shore,” Hibberd writes. “A series of tall poles on an adjacent concrete slab mark the outline of the RMS Titanic as an eerie memorial. The site was tough to beat, not only as a practical choice but also as an unintended metaphor. The birthplace of what was once the world’s biggest and most lavish ship was about to create the world’s biggest and most lavish TV drama.”
It’s even more synchronous when you take into account that original pilot I mentioned, and how it was so bad that it very nearly sank the show before it ever managed to pull of port.
Thankfully, unlike the ill-fated ship, the show managed to steer clear of any icebergs, and ultimately changed TV for the better.
2. The origin of the “two-hander” scenes
One thing I loved about Game of Thrones was how it managed to pair up characters who never had the chance to cross paths in the novels due to the strict point-of-view system that George R.R. Martin uses. What if Brienne and Cersei had a chance to talk at the Purple Wedding? What sort of conversations would Varys and Littlefinger have behind closed doors?
There were plenty of ways Thrones went about crafting those meetings…but one of the most commonly used was known as “two-handers.” Both of those examples I just gave fit the category. Two characters, often who hadn’t cross paths in the book, trading excellently written lines back and forth. These scenes gave the show the chance to flesh out its characters, show off its great actors, and make more use of its spectacular (and expensive) sets.
As it turns out, these sorts of scenes happened almost by accident. During the chaotic filming of the first season, before the writers and crew had really nailed down their process, the directors would often cut pages from the script because they couldn’t logistically fit it all into the work schedule. Or budget would intrude. For whatever reason, there were cuts.
It got to the point where some of the episodes were running as short as 34 minutes. Facing a need to fill that time, the writers had to get creative.
“It was late in the process,” said Gina Balian, former vice president of drama at HBO and one of the players involved in these decisions at the time. “You’re thinking you’re almost done, and then you realize your episodes are short. And the way the cast was scheduled meant they weren’t all still there. We also didn’t have every set at our disposal. So the producing team said: ‘You’ve got these actors, these sets…what can you do?'”
Writer Bryan Cogman, the “third head of the dragon” and lore keeper of the GoT team, elaborated further:
"As a result, we wrote all of these new scenes that ended up defining the style of the show. They were these wonderful, lengthy [conversations between two characters], because we needed scenes that would fill the time, use our series regulars and use our existing sets, but not cost money or take too long to shoot. As a result you get scenes like the one with Robert and Cersei. If that problem hadn’t happened, I don’t think we would have had as rich a show."
That scene Cogman mentioned is during Season 1 Episode 5, “The Wolf and the Lion” — it’s the one where Robert and Cersei ruminate on their failed marriage over wine, marking perhaps the most tender moment we ever see from either of those characters. I can only speak for myself, but man am I glad that scene — and many others like it — ended up making it in.
3. The first day Kit Harington and Rose Leslie met was also the first time their characters met in the show
Of all the romances on Game of Thrones, few are as beautiful and tragic as the one between Jon Snow and his first love, the Wildling Ygritte.
Actually, scratch that. There are plenty of beautifully tragic romances on Thrones. But unlike all the rest of them, Jon and Ygritte’s star-crossed romance actually worked out in the end…in a way. Seven years after meeting on the show, actors Kit Harington and Rose Leslie married in real life. In a poetic sort of way, Jon Snow and Ygritte did end up together, just as many fans always wished they could have.
Speaking to Hibberd about filming seasons 2 and 3 in Iceland, Harington opened up about the day that he and Rose Leslie first met. “I googled Rose when I found out she was playing the part,” Harington said. “Then I met her in a costume fitting — so the first time I ever saw Rose she was dressed as Ygritte. She offered me a ginger biscuit, which is very sweet. I was completely enamored. I was also bowled over by her portrayal of the character, which suggested brilliance to me.”
David Nutter, who directed the two actors in their very scene, recalled their immediate chemistry.
"I was the director the first day they met each other. The first scene we shot was when the Night’s Watch take out the Wildlings and he puts the sword to her neck and he’s about to kill her. Kit told me it was the happiest day of his life. You could tell there was a real spark."
Yes, it turns out that Rose Leslie and Kit Harington actually met on the very day they filmed the scene where their characters meet. That gives that scene above, from season 2’s “The Old Gods and the New” a whole extra layer of meaning. It’s almost like a historic document, really!
4. The production changed how it handled actor deaths after the Red Wedding traumatized everyone
Perhaps the most infamous event in all Game of Thrones was the Red Wedding, which shocked viewers the world over and flooded the internet with aghast reaction videos. The brutal murder of Robb Stark, his wife Talisa, and Stark matriarch Catelyn was about as devastating as plot twists get.
From a production standpoint, the Red Wedding was pretty unique. The sequence was filmed mostly in chronological order — a rarity on Thrones, which often shot scenes out of order and then pieced them together. According to Michelle Fairley (Catelyn Stark), that gave the shoot an atmosphere of impending doom. “I made sure that the most powerful points were near the end of the shoot,” said director David Nutter. “These are beloved characters that everybody loved being around. You want to build up the emotional journey of the sequence.”
As it turned out, that emotional journey ended up being…well, a bit more emotional than anticipated.
The final scene of the Red Wedding was also Richard Madden (Robb), Oona Chaplin (Talisa), and Michelle Fairley’s last day of filming on Game of Thrones. Each departed almost immediately afterward — Richard Madden wasn’t even able to stay for the wrap party because of another filming commitment. “We were mentally exhausted,” he remembered. “I cried my eyes out, completely, as did a lot of the crew and other actors. It was very emotional.”
But it wasn’t until a week later when David Benioff and Dan Weiss began to realize how traumatic the whole experience had been for those involved. “We tried to call Michelle afterward,” said Weiss. “She wasn’t answering. A week later she wrote an email saying, ‘Sorry I haven’t been able to talk to anybody about the show for the past week because I’ve been so shattered.'”
After that, the production reevaluated how it killed off characters, and tried to make sure that actors had at least after their characters were brutally murdered, so they could decompress and process.
Helen Sloan – HBO (13) Jaime Brienne
5. Jaime and Brienne’s relationship is baaaasically the same off-screen
Among the more serious points of intrigue in Fire Cannot Kill A Dragon, there are also plenty of hilarious insights into the lives and experiences of the cast and crew. For example, the book details the first meeting between Gwendoline Christie (Brienne of Tarth) and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister). It plays out pretty close to how their characters got on back in season 3.
Christie recounted the whole thing for Hibberd:
"On one of my first days of filming, I was told Nikolaj was in the makeup truck and that I should go and say hello. I didn’t want to because I felt so shy. They said, “Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll be nice.” So I walked in and I said, “Hello, my name is Gwen,…,” and then, “I’m playing Brienne.” He just looked me up and down like I was an alien from another planet, possibly a pile of manure, and then said: “Oh, so that’s you, is it?” I was really uncomfortable. I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “Okay…,” and then he went back to looking at himself in the mirror. I felt awful.”"
Coster-Waldau saw it another way. “She has this whole story about me being very rude to her when we first met,” he said. “I don’t remember that at all.”
But Christie stands firm: “He has denied this! He has denied it publicly. He’s denied it to my face in private. But when he denies it privately, he laughs. Nikolaj can have an incredibly selective memory.”
There are plenty more of these sorts of back-and-forths, basically driving home that Coster-Waldau and Christie have the same sort of easy rapport off screen that Jaime and Brienne do onscreen. For example, here’s them reading the season 8 scripts and finding out that their characters have sex:
"Christie: “I received a text from Nikolaj just laughing. I sent back a being-sick emoji. How modern.” Coster-Waldau: “It was really weird [to film],” said Coster-Waldau. “It was awkward. I was trying to laugh, and Gwendoline was like, “Don’t you f***ing laugh!'”"
There’s chemistry, and then there’s chemistry.
Image: prideofgypsies
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.
SAN DIEGO, CA – JULY 25: Writer George R.R. Martin attends HBO’s “Game Of Thrones” panel and Q&A during Comic-Con International 2014 at San Diego Convention Center on July 25, 2014 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
7. Fantasy author Ty Franck once defended George R. R. Martin from a beard thief
One of the most ridiculous tales in Hibberd’s book comes during the chapter where the cast and crew recount the show’s jump in renown after Season 4. While doing conventions and signings to promote the series, author George R.R. Martin recounted one of his more…memorable encounters.
"At another signing, a guy asked if he could cut off a piece of my beard. I said no and resumed signing. The son of a bitch got a pair of scissors and snuck up around behind me and tried to get some of my hair. My assistant at the time, Ty Franck, who is half of the writing team James S.A. Corey, wrestled him and took the scissors away."
Yes, you read that right. There was a time when Ty Franck, one of the authors of The Expanse, literally wrestled away scissors from a beard thief who was hell bent on acquiring a piece of George R.R. Martin’s beard. Did the obsessive fan hope to steal some of the author’s power? Was he just really into beards? Did he…have a creepy collection of famous facial hair?
We’ll never know. But man is it an absurd scenario to visualize.
Image: Game of Thrones/HBO
8. Dame Diana Rigg and Johnathan Price ruled the set
We’ve all heard stories about actors being divas on set. For the most part, Game of Thrones was an exception. As Joe Dempsie (Gendry) told Hibberd, “Nobody is bigger than the show. So there was very little ego.” That atmosphere went a long way on a show with as many big-name actors as this.
But there were a few funny exceptions. Perhaps my favorite is Ian McShane — who played the Brother Ray in season 6 — kicking his lunch across the set and hitting Rory McCann, who played the Hound. But a close second were the many stories about how nervous the cast and crew were working with Dame Diana Rigg (Olenna Tyrell) and Johnathan Pryce (the High Sparrow), both of whom had long, illustrious careers before joining the show.
Writer Dave Hill recalled Johnathan Pryce’s first rehearsal, and how he upended expectations. “During rehearsal, Johnathan asked to change some words. Usually on Thrones our response to actors who ask do that is, ‘No.’ We’ve thought about those words. No changing, no improvising, no adding to them. And Johnathan was making changes. I turned to Bryan [Cogman]: ‘That’s not what the line is…’ And Bryan glared at me. It was the closest he ever came to murdering me. Bryan went, ‘If you think I’m going to tell Johnathan Pryce he can’t cut words on his first day on our set, you’re crazy.'”
Of course, did his first scene so well that director Mark Mylod didn’t have a single note for him, which was more or less unheard of. So while Pryce might have shuffled things around a little, he was more than worth whatever anxiety it caused.
Far funnier were the tales of Diana Rigg. Jessica Henwick (Nymeria Sand) had perhaps the best story about Rigg’s charmingly imperious nature on set:
"Have you been hearing Diana Rigg stories? We had a scene. She walked onto the set, and she went, “I’m ready now!” A cameraman came over and went, “Well, okay, but we haven’t finished setting up.” She interrupted him and said, “Roll the cameras!” And she just started doing her lines. She did two takes, and then the guy came over and was like, “Great, now we’re going to do a close-up.” And she just stood up and she went, “I’m done!” Now, she can’t walk fast. She has to be helped. So basically we just sat there and watched as Diana Rigg effectively did her own version of storming off the set, but it was at 0.1 miles per hour. She cracked me up. I loved her."
Natalie Dormer, who played Olenna’s granddaughter Margaery, was also part of the Diana Rigg fanclub. “When you have someone who has that many accolades, you just shut up and watch,” she said. “She had a very dry sense of humor and was aware of the parody of herself. Sometimes I think she was mischievous to see what she could get away with.”
Even Miguel Sapochnik, who directed intense episodes like “Battle of the Bastards” and “The Long Night,” was helpless before them. “When Miguel Sapochnik was directing Pryce and Rigg, they were kind of just f***ing with him,” said Hill. “I went to Miguel with a little performance note and he goes, ‘I’ve got Johnathan Pryce and an English dame on my hands right now, sit down, I have to deal with this.’ They were batting him back and forth like a ball of yarn between two cats.”
Oh, and speaking of cats…
9. The True Story of Ser Pounce
Game of Thrones didn’t have the easiest time with animals, with the Stark direwolves getting sidelined as the show went on. Yet those wolves, which were played by real dogs in season 1 and CGI in later seasons, were far from the only animals on set. There was also Ser Pounce, King Tommen Baratheon’s adorable…kitten?
You see, in the novels, Ser Pounce is one of King Tommen’s three black kittens (the other two are named Boots and Lady Whiskers). Originally, they weren’t in the show’s outline…but Bryan Cogman set his heart on including Ser Pounce, and found a way to make it happen.
It was supposed to be a short, simple scene, where Margaery Tyrell sneaks into Tommen’s bed chamber for a visit, and the cute little kitten jumps on the bed to get petted and basically look cute.
But as is often the case when it comes to filming animals on television, nothing went quite right.
“Ser Pounce was supposed to be a little dainty kitten,” said Bryan Cogman. “And then this giant-ass cat showed up. And then the cat wouldn’t do anything.”
The cat had one cue: jump on the bed. But as the film crew tried over and over to get the shot, it became apparent that their feline co-star just wasn’t going to cooperate. In the end, a crew member had to toss the cat up onto the bed from off-screen.
Once the cat was on the bed, the troubles continued. Natalie Dormer had to basically hold the cat still so she could get through her lines. “That cat was a real diva,” she said. “We got one take that was halfway passable, and that was the one we used.”
“To be fair, cats aren’t famous for taking direction,” Cogman added.
10. The eerie ending of “Hardhome” was a mistake
Probably my favorite episode of Game of Thrones’ entire run was “Hardhome,” the season 5 battle episode that saw Jon Snow and his Night’s Watch comrades teaming up with the Wildlings stranded at a makeshift city north of the Wall to fight the army of the dead. It was a stunning sequence with slow burn tension and explosions of violence and action that kept viewers on the edge of their seats for the better part of 20 minutes.
And it very nearly could have gone very differently. Originally, the Game of Thrones producers reached out to Neil Marshall to direct the episode. Marshall had successfully shot the Battle of Blackwater Bay in season 2 and the battle at Castle Black in season 4, but he wasn’t available to take on the Massacre at Hardhome. Marshall said that turning down the episode was his “biggest regret” on Thrones.
But it all ended well, as we know, because Miguel Sapochnik was brought in to do the episode. It might seem hard to imagine now, since Sapochnik is the director behind most of the biggest action set-pieces of the back half of the show, but at the time, hiring him was a huge leap of faith.
“It was trial by fire for Miguel Sapochnik,” said Dave Hill. “It was: ‘Here’s our biggest action sequence for season five. We all love it. You don’t know all the actors or the crew. Make your magic happen.’ But Miguel is a super prepper. He came in with a plan of attack. It was all hands on deck for that month, and it came out even better than what we had on the page.”
Image: Game of Thrones/HBO
Sapochnik does go into detail in the book about some of those page-to-screen changes. Originally, the battle took place entirely on a huge beach, with the wights running down the Wildlings on the shoreline. But it was later realized that the wights would simply have slaughtered their opponents too fast that way — not to mention that it would have been basically impossible to film a battle between the army of the dead and 95,000 Wildlings.
Sapochnik and the writing team came up with the idea of the palisade wall, so that they could have a “microcosm of the action” where they could “point the camera in almost any direction.” As we all know by now, that worked out very well, even in spite of a fierce rainstorm that drenched the cast and crew as they tried to get the shots they needed to make the sequence work.
“It was chaos,” Kit Harington recalled. “Joyous chaos. The weather helped [the performances]. A lot of people remember Battle of the Bastards, but for me Hardhome was the battle I loved the most. I loved shooting it. Story-wise, it was fantastic.”
There’s quite a bit of meat to this section of Fire Cannot Kill A Dragon, but the coolest takeaway from it is that the eerie, silent ending where the Night King lifts his arms and reanimates all the freshly slaughtered Wildlings while Jon Snow watches on in horror…happened somewhat by accident.
“The silent ending in that moment came from a happy mistake,” Sapochnik said. “Someone forgot to extend the music track over that part of the rough cut, and I found it much more powerful without music. All these things are a process. As much as it would be nice to start at the end, it’s the process that brings out the best in an idea.”
11. The torture of Septa Unella
Fire Cannot Kill A Dragon also includes a pretty lengthy recounting of Cersei’s Walk of Shame, one of the central scenes of the season 5 finale, “Mother’s Mercy.” Hibberd dug up all the details on the casting for Cersei’s body double, how the cast and crew navigated this difficult scene, and all sorts of other interesting tidbits.
Then there was Septa Unella. Played by Hannah Waddingham, the stoic, blank-faced Septa continuously “shames” Cersei throughout her imprisonment and the terrible walk she must endure afterward. There’s no denying that Cersei Lannister is pretty awful…but it’s hard not to root for her when she finally gives the sadistic Unella her well-deserved comeuppance, pouring wine on her while gleefully recounting her many sins.
As it turns out, what we saw on screen was the “tame version” of Unella’s final moments. According to Waddingham, Unella was originally supposed to be “raped by the Mountain.” The actress showed up to shoot the scene, was tied to a table in the dungeons of King’s Landing…only to then find out that the scene had been changed. And, unfortunately for her, the tamer version ended up being an even more “tortuous experience” than what was originally planned. Literally. Here’s what Waddingham had to say about it:
"They instead decided to have [Unella] waterboarded. But I didn’t know that until I was lying on the torture table. All I knew was I had been given a wetsuit top in my trailer. So I put it on going, ‘I don’t know what this is for, but hey-ho.’ So David Benioff and Dan Weiss come up to me while I’m strapped to the table. They go, “Look, the script said, ‘Cersei empties the remainder of her glass of red wine into Unella’s face to wake her up.’ But fans are going to be expecting more brutality toward Unella, so it needs to be a full carafe of wine. We then spent the whole day with me being waterboarded. I’m not exaggerating when I say that — other than childbirth — it was the worst day of my life. The wine was going in my face for seven or eight hours while they were getting every pass under the sun. It was basically like drowning while the rest of your body is dry. One of the crew came up and was like, “Hannah are you all right? Because we are actually waterboarding you.” And I’m all, “You don’t have to tell me that!“"
Brutal indeed.
12. New details on how George R.R. Martin will handle Hodor’s death
One of the most heartbreaking moments of Game of Thrones season 6 was the showstopping ending to “The Door.” As Meera Reed drags Bran Stark away from a cavern that has been overrun by the Night King and his army, she shouts back at the ever-loyal Hodor to “hold the door,” giving them time to escape. As Hodor is wounded by the wights trying to break through, we discover that his mental affliction was caused by Bran — who was then projecting himself back into the past — in this very moment, as his warging creates a kind of feedback loop that leaves Hodor’s younger self unable to say anything other than “Hodor,” a shortened version of Meera Reed’s final plea to him.
Showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss have said that this scene was one of three jaw-droppers they learned from George R.R. Martin when he outlined the as-yet unfinished books to them. (The other two were Shireen’s death by pyre and Bran becoming king.)
While The Winds of Winter may not be in our hands to read quite yet, Martin did reveal some new details about his version of Hodor’s death while talking to Hibberd. “I thought they executed it very well, but there are going to be differences in the book,” Martin said. “They did it very physical — ‘hold the door’ with Hodor’s strength. In the book, Hodor has stolen one of the old swords from the crypt. Bran has been warging into Hodor and practicing with his body, because Bran had been trained in swordplay. So telling Hodor to ‘hold the door’ is more like ‘hold this pass’ — defend it when enemies are coming — and Hodor is fighting and killing them. A little different, but same idea.”
It’s amazing to me how even in that brief description, you can get a feel for the sort of image Martin is painting. Will Hodor be fighting in the caverns, still giving Bran and Meera time to escape after the wights overrun the Three-Eyed Raven’s refuge? Martin didn’t go into that much detail…but still, this is the most information he’s divulged about that scene publicly, and it’s pretty exciting.
Image: Game of Thrones/HBO
13. A key shot was cut from “Battle of the Bastards”…and another iconic one was created on the fly to replace it
While Fire Cannot Kill A Dragon provides many surprises about the production of Game of Thrones, it shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that the Battle of the Bastards was difficult to film. There was immense pressure to make the Battle of the Bastards (or BoB, as it was commonly called on set) “bigger and better” than the Massacre at Hardhome.
To prepare, director Miguel Sapochnik scoured the annals of history for actual battles to draw inspiration from, and watched many famous battles from movies. As he took notes on what worked and what didn’t from other fictional skirmishes, Sapochnik realized that the closer he could keep the action fixated on the perspectives of the characters engaged in the fight — like Jon, Tormund, and Davos — the deeper the viewer would be pulled into the experience. He wanted to portray what it would actually feel like to be in those chaotic moments when you were surrounded by thousands of people slaughtering each other or standing before a line of charging horsemen. He opted to go in for close, personal shots instead of aerial views that showed more of the battlefield, which is the more common approach.
Although there were still some of those bigger aerial shots. But one in particular didn’t make the cut. “There was a part in the script where Jon was going to run up the body pile and he and Tormund would stand up there with a 360-degree view of how the battle was progressing,” Dave Hill recalled. “But to do that, you’d have to keep re-dressing that entire field.”
Sapochnik elaborated further:
"On the body pile, Jon was going to survey the carnage, unaware that a horseman with a spear had locked on to him. As Jon watches his men perish, we were going to have an ‘all is lost’ moment. The horseman charges up the body pile toward Jon. At the last minute, the pile of bodies explodes and the giant Wun Wun bursts through, coming between the horseman and Jon and punching the horse, knocking it back down and saving Jon in the process."
“Miguel was like, ‘I need three extra days to do it,'” said Hill. “The production didn’t have three extra days.”
Instead, Sapochnik pitched a new idea to Benioff and Weiss, who generally did not approve of last minute changes to scripts: Jon gets knocked down and trampled by his own men. It would be a “suffocating, claustrophobic” scene, much easier to shoot — and once again, it kept things focused on Jon’s personal story as opposed to getting a broad view of the battle. “I hadn’t even worked out exactly how to do it, I just knew we needed a Plan B,” Sapochnik said.
The scene in question turned out to be one of the battle’s most memorable moments. As Hibberd succinctly puts it: “Once again, a creative pivot to an unexpected problem resulted in a classic Game of Thrones moment.”
14. Sansa’s final shot in “Battle of the Bastards” was improvised
Speaking of things that weren’t originally in the script for “Battle of the Bastards,” here’s a surprising detail about Sansa’s final moments in the episode. After retaking Winterfell and caging Ramsay Bolton, Sansa goes to visit him for one last conversation. As Ramsay insists that he’s influenced Sansa enough that he’ll live on as a “part of her,” the eldest Stark daughter tells him that she’s going to feed him to his once-faithful dogs.
You remember the scene. Brutal, and cathartic for viewers who had watched Ramsay torture other characters for the better part of four seasons. And no one felt more catharsis than the actors involved.
“I feel really lucky he got a proper send-off,” said Iwan Rheon (Ramsay Bolton). “It’s a gruesome death, and it’s so ironic as he’s been banging on about those hounds. And it leaves Sansa in an interesting place as a character. He’s saying ‘I’m inside you.’ [Rheon shudders.] It’s horrible, but he probably has done some damage. He’s got in her head, and he’s probably broken her in some way.”
“He just gets under her skin,” Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark) agreed, “and that he violated her in such a terrible way, she can never get that part of her back again. He’s imprinted in her mentally and physically.”
It all culminated with a final shot of Sansa as she walks away from the cage where Ramsay is squealing in agony as he’s ripped apart. She smiles just a little, and the screen cuts to black.
“That smile Sophie gave as she walked away was all her,” said Dave Hill. “That wasn’t in the script. We saw it in one of her takes, and David and Dan were like, ‘Oh, that’s great…'”
Though Game of Thrones was not known for its improvised moments, that one is a total gem. Turner conveyed so much with that one expression. It might be one of the most haunting shots of the entire episode, and it was totally unplanned.
15. Davos was supposed to have a “crush” on Missandei
The seventh season of Game of Thrones was polarizing, but it still had some great moments. For example, the first meeting between Jon Snow and Danaerys stands out. It was a scene the show had been working toward for years — the meeting of Ice and Fire.
But there was another element that was supposed to be at play during Jon’s time on Dragonstone: Davos Seaworth, Jon’s advisor and mentor figure for the latter half of the series was…supposed to have the hots for Missandei? If that sounds like a weird, bad idea to you, know that Liam Cunningham, who plays Davos, felt pretty much the same way.
“There’s a streak in Benioff that’s willful,” Cunningham said. “He likes to stir the shit. When we first meet Daenerys, Benioff and [director Mark Mylod] wanted Davos to have a crush on Missandei. And I fought them. ‘I’m not f***ing doing it.’ It’s the only thing I ever stood up to them on. The woman is a goddess, but with Davos’s history with Lyanna Mormont and Shireen, you can’t have him getting the hots for a young woman. I’m not 100 percent sure David wasn’t just doing it to annoy me.”
“You’re not undoing my hard work engendering the sympathy of the audience to have him be a perv,” Cunningham proclaimed.
I think I can speak for everyone when I say that I’m sure glad we dodged that bullet. It’s hard to imagine season 7 being more controversial, what with Gendry’s amazing sprinting ability and the airspeed velocity of ravens…but if anything might have done it, it would have been Davos getting a creepy crush on Missandei.
Although, Cunningham did make a good point about being unsure if David Benioff wasn’t just trying to annoy him. Given the showrunner’s habit for pranking people, it’s far from impossible.
Image: HBO/Game of Thrones
16. Arya’s “Not today” line was the one David Benioff was proudest of writing
Between the passionate writers, excellent source material and wonderfully fleshed out characters, there’s no shortage of great lines on Game of Thrones. Early in Fire Cannot Kill A Dragon, David Benioff reveals his favorite line that he’d written for the show. Interestingly, he almost dodges claiming the credit for it, until his fellow showrunner calls him out.
"Benioff: “I was recently at dinner with my wife and my parents. My mom, who’s eighty-two, asked: ‘Who wrote [‘Not today’]?’ For a minute I couldn’t remember. I was like, ‘Oh, I think that was in the books.’ As I said that I’m like, ‘Wait a second…'” Weiss: “Take credit, especially for your mom.” Benioff: “I don’t remember what religious or quasi-religious impulse led to that line. I guess it’s sad that the line I’m most proud of writing was from the first season.”"
Whatever led Benioff to writing those words, it’s pretty safe to say that the show was much better off for them. They became a mantra for Arya Stark, first learned from her mentor Syrio Forel. (In the books, her repeated mantra is “Fear cuts deeper than swords,” which is also great but maybe not something you can easily repeat over and over on TV.) She used them again during her training at the House of Black and White, before finally being used one last time by Melisandre to steer Arya toward her eventual defeat of the Night King.
That payoff, by the way, was part of Benioff’s “proudest moment” during his long tenure as one of the masterminds behind Game of Thrones.
“Maybe my proudest moment from this show was when screening ‘The Long Night’ at the Mann’s Chinese Theatre,” Benioff said. “When Arya gets the Night King, the whole theater erupted. I was sitting next to my wife and her best friend, Sarah Paulson. My wife was grabbing my arm, and Sarah was screaming. I’ll never forget that feeling.”
17. The fight between the Mountain and the Hound was torture to film
We’ve talked quite a bit about Miguel Sapochnik, who shot many of the show’s most expansive and breathtaking battles. Considering how many hours Sapochnik spent in the mud and rain filming set-pieces like the Battle of the Bastards and the Long Night (which took a record-breaking 11 straight weeks of night shoots), it surprised me to learn that the scene that gave him the most trouble was the stairwell showdown between Sandor Clegane and his big brother the Mountain.
“My least favorite experience on Thrones,” Sapochnik said of the fight scene. “Hard set, tired crew. Exhausted actors — though Rory [McCann, who plays the Hound] saved the day. There were so many details that you would never know about looking at it, but they were the stuff nightmares are made of.”
Hafþór Björnsson, the Icelandic strongman who played the Mountain in seasons 4-8, also remembered it as a grueling experience.
"It was some of the hardest work I’ve had to do, bar none. I lost over thirty pounds of body weight during the fight. Makeup started four a.m. and went on for hours and hours. A big part of my body was covered in prosthetics and there were lenses in my eyes. I was in full armor, and it’s a proper heavy armor. We were working for up to eighteen hours per day, and a great deal of the time we were shooting the fighting; the whole scene, doing the same actions again and again and again. Rory McCann was great to work with, and I am proud to have been an integral part of one of the most epic fight scenes ever created."
Also consider that this was done after those eleven weeks of night shoots that I mentioned for “The Long Night.”
Thankfully, as both Björnsson and Sapochnik noted, Rory McCann brought a lot of excitement and energy to the sequence. In the end, it did end up being pretty awesome.
“I’m very happy with the way the Hound’s story ended, thank you very much,” said McCann. “My last filming days were the fight. I’m absolutely sure I’m going to be limping for months. It’s a glorious death.”
Image: Game of Thrones/HBO
18. Many people on the creative team had no idea Dany’s heel turn was coming, including Emilia Clarke
Throughout Game of Thrones, little was as much of a gut punch as Daenerys Targaryen’s descent into pyromaniacal madness. Thrones received a lot of flack for how it handled Daenerys’ heel turn in the series’ penultimate episode, “The Bells.” Many claimed the show rushed her transformation, giving us the bib moment without taking the time to really earn it. Whether you agree or not, it’s a plot twist that makes you watch the rest of the show in a different way, because there are quite a few hints early on that Dany could end up like this.
Still, fans weren’t the only ones left scratching their heads. Cast and crew members also didn’t know this was where things were heading. Take director Alex Graves, who helmed great episodes like “The Mountain and the Viper” and “The Children.” He also shot “Breaker of Chains,” the episode where Dany begins her conquest of Meereen. “I actually did not know we were telling the story of Daenerys going the way of her ancestors,” Graves said. “I thought were telling the story of her not doing that.”
Of course, no one was more taken aback by Daenerys’ fate than Emilia Clarke, the actor who played her for nearly a decade. Benioff and Weiss knew where Daenerys’ story was headed and tried to steer Clarke toward playing up Dany’s “cold expressionless” during her more ruthless scenes, but it was often done without explaining to her the why of it all.
It all culminated with her receiving the scripts for season 8, and being totally floored by what lay in store for her character. “I genuinely did this, and it’s f***ing embarrassing and I’m going to admit to you,” Clarke said. “I called my mom and said, ‘I read the scripts and I don’t want to tell you what happens but can you just talk me off this ledge? I just went walking and I’m having a little cry. It really messed me up.’ And then I was asking my mom and brother really weird questions, and they were like, ‘What are you asking us this for? What do you mean, ‘Do you think Daenerys is a good person?””
It makes some sense that the show would play its bigger twists close to the vest considering all of the issues it had with leaks…but at the same time, it feels pretty unconventional that even the actor playing Daenerys wasn’t told where her arc was heading. The fans who were blindsided are in good company.
NEW YORK, NY – APRIL 03: David Benioff and D.B. Weiss attend the Season 8 premiere of “Game of Thrones” at Radio City Music Hall on April 3, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Taylor Hill/Getty Images)
19. It was always the showrunners’ plan to end Game of Thrones in around seven seasons
The final two seasons of Game of Thrones received a ton of push back, and unfortunately, in the age of the Internet, that translated to its showrunners getting blasted with a lot of negativity. You’ve probably heard of the much-circulated petition to redo the final season with “competent writers”? The fandom has been pretty rough on Benioff and Weiss, considering that Game of Thrones literally would not have gotten made without them.
I admit, I have a tendency to defend them, despite the issues the last two seasons had. There’s just too much good on Thrones to not be grateful for its existence, and its existence is inextricably linked to Benioff and Weiss.
Maybe that’s why it grates on me so much when I hear people say they think the showrunners rushed to end Game of Thrones early with fewer episodes than it required so that they could work on another project, like their now-canceled Star Wars trilogy for Disney. Thankfully, Hibberd addresses this complaint in his book, confirming that it was always Benioff and Weiss’s plan to end the show with roughly the number of episodes that they did.
The way that Hibberd gets the point across is pretty clever, really. Since he was lucky enough to cover Thrones for nearly the entirety of its run, Hibberd had an archive of interviews to draw from. So what did he do, exactly? He took quotes from Benioff and Weiss from over the years and put them all together. Laid. out like that, it’s pretty hard to dispute that it was the showrunners’ plan to end the show when they did since it started in 2011.
“We went into this with the potentially overambitious notion that to get to the end, we would have seventy or eighty or however many hours,” showrunner Dan Weiss said, while filming season 2.
“Seven seasons is the plan,” Benioff affirmed during the filming of season 4. “Season four is right down the middle, the pivot point. Seven gods, seven kingdoms, seven seasons — it feels right to us.”
There are a few more quotes like that, but you get the picture. Maybe now that Hibberd has succinctly compiled all these quotes, that baseless complaint can finally be laid to rest…
But hey, it’s the Internet. I’m not holding my breath.
SAN DIEGO, CA – JULY 25: Writer George R.R. Martin of “Game of Thrones” signs autographs during the 2014 Comic-Con International Convention-Day 3 at the San Diego Convention Center on July 25, 2014 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Tiffany Rose/Getty Images)
20. George R.R. Martin’s hope for the legacy of the show is being fulfilled, right now
Near the end of Fire Cannot Kill A Dragon, Hibberd asks what he calls “that traditional final question for when something popular and influential concludes.”
What is its legacy?
While there are several thought-provoking answers from the likes of Benioff, Weiss and Bryan Cogman, the one that really hit me in the feels was George R. R. Martin’s. Because, for all of the show’s brilliance and imperfection, GRRM’s hopes for its legacy are already coming to pass, right now.
I’ll let the man answer for himself:
"We were the most popular show in the world, for a time. We set a record for most Emmys, and that’s a legacy. But records are made to be broken, and twelve years ago there was another show that was was the most popular in the world and I don’t know what it was. I tell you what I hope for in terms of legacy: that we established adult fantasy as a viable genre on television. Now everybody wants “the next Game of Thrones.” Will anything be the next Game of Thrones? Even our prequels? I don’t know. If they all flop, then it will be another ten years before somebody tries a fantasy show again. That would be sad. I would like to see fantasy become a permanent genre, like lawyer shows or cop shows. There are good cop shows and shit cop shows, but there are always cop shows coming on. And it doesn’t matter if a cop show is good because there’s always another coming. That’s what I would like to see, every year a new fantasy show or two. That would be the legacy I would like to see for Game of Thrones."
We’ve talked a lot over the past year about those “next Game of Thrones” shows Martin mentioned. Shows like The Witcher, His Dark Materials, The Wheel of Time, and Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings series would likely not have gotten greenlit — especially with the sorts of budgets they have — without the success of Game of Thrones. Whether that legacy will hold is the sort of thing that only time will tell.
For now, as the Streaming Wars rage and companies scramble to fill that cultural void left by Game of Thrones, it appears that the show is living up to the legacy George R.R. Martin hoped for. And that is a beautiful thing.
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