Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is sharing some fresh thoughts on how it felt filming some of the most iconic Jaime Lannister scenes in Game of Thrones.
Of all of Game of Thrones’ myriad characters, Jaime Lannister is one of the hardest to pin down. He’s a selfish monster at times, as the first episode ends with him shoving a kid out of a tower to cover up his affair with his own sister. Yet he has some semblance of honor, a man who’s long carried the title “Kingslayer” when he was actually saving the kingdom from a mad ruler.
Much of the fan appeal for the character comes from Coster-Waldau’s amazing performance in the role. He made Jaime a character fans could boo in one scene and then want to cheer on in the next. Appearing on the Rich Eisen Show, Coster-Waldau opened up on a few of the iconic scenes from Game of Thrones' run.
The actor began discussing the scene where Jaime’s hand is cut off, sharing he was sick with a serious flu during filming.
“So I was in the trailer and they were like, 'Can you please come out?' and I was like, 'Yes.' And so I was just almost this lying there, so that was fun," he recalled. "And they had this knife that was like a fake knife with a little curved thing, so he could smack it down on my [wrist]. And yeah, then I screamed, that was it. And then they dragged me back to my bed.”
Eisen joked that the flu actually helped Jaime look terrible. "I was completely out of it that night...it helped," Coster-Waldau agreed.
He also touched on how it felt shooting the series pilot, and how he thought it was "never going to go anywhere," thanks to all its fantasy elements like dragons and knights in armor. "And then a year later it aired, and we went to the ComicCon in San Diego and it was packed with people and I realized, okay, this is actually...people like this."
What was Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s favorite Game of Thrones scene?
Obviously, Eisen asked the common question of the actor’s favorite filming experience on the show. Coster-Waldau praised the scene of Jaime being attacked by dragons during the Loot Train battle in season 7, which was filmed in Spain. "We had three weeks there and it was just incredible. That's exactly it, that's the sequence. " he recalled. "It was a beautiful place, and then it was the whole...for me, that's the peak of that show. It got so big. We had these incredible stunt teams...on that sequence they set like a world record on most people put on fire in one go, which, you know, which is ridiculous. But when you're watching it, it's pretty amazing. And then me being on the horse going through everything, and there's fires everywhere. It was the scale...it was fun."
Coster-Waldau was also asked whether there were any of the show's big twists that he learned later into production, such as the death and resurrection of Jon Snow. The actor revealed that he, along with most of the series regulars, got scripts ahead of time so they weren't surprised by those turns, but that many others who worked on the show weren't in the know.
“It's a funny thing, isn't it because you know that whole secrecy and and the way people want to hide these things, right? It just it feels like, to me, it becomes part of the publicity," he mused. "Because at the end of the day, nobody really wants to know...you know what I mean? I mean, like you don't want to know what happens in your favorite show. So the people that start talking about it...it's just you know, it's noise.”
As for whether there was any scene Coster-Waldau refused to do because he didn’t like it or thought it wasn't right for Jaime, the actor said he never experienced anything like that. He did feel “awkward” at various scenes, most famously when Jaime shares a bath with Brienne (Gwendoline Christie). It wasn’t just being "butt naked" in the water, but also how he had to “have like this weird green sock on my actual hand and I had this prosthetic sticking out” to create Jaime's lost hand for 12 hours of filming.
It’s a fun talk, as it’s clear that Coster-Waldau still loves the show and his role, and is proud of making it all work. It proves how it is hard to imagine anyone else in the role of Jaime, and it's nice to listen to the actor sound so engaged talking about the great times he had on set.
All eight seasons of Game of Thrones are streaming on HBO Max. The next spinoff, House of the Dragon, premieres its third season in June.