Game of Thrones bosses had "long and boring fight" on how to kill Ned Stark

When Game of Thrones fans start debating the most iconic moments from the show, a few top contenders usually arise. There's the Red Wedding, where Walder Frey kills Robb and Catelyn Stark. There's the moment in "Hardhome" when the Night King raises an undead wildling army as Jon Snow looks on, horrified. There's the bit where Cersei Lannister blows up the Sept of Baelor with all her enemies inside, and there's the on that started it all: the death of Ned Stark, the ostensible main character of the show, near the end of the first season.

Game of Thrones had a reputation for being a show where "anyone can die," and it was because of this moment. The scene still resonates today, and was apparently the result of a heated debate between showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss. "I remember the big [fight] we had was at the very end of season one [of Game of Thrones] when Ned Stark is beheaded," Benioff said during a roundtable interview, according to The Telegraph. "And we knew that we wanted to cut out of the scene in the episode right before you see his head fall off, but do you see the blade actually go into the neck or do you see it stop like right before the neck.

"We had this long and boring fight about exactly which frame it should end on. We settled on a frame where you just see the blade starting to enter, so that no one would think that he's actually alive. We wanted people to know that Ned Stark dies here, but we didn't want to show all the blood and spine or any of that stuff."

As you can see in the scene above, they got exactly what they wanted; the blade goes into Ned Stark's head, but we don't linger long enough to see any blood. Iconic stuff.

Game of Thrones showrunners reunite for 3 Body Problem on Netflix

Most of the time, Benioff and Weiss are jointly credited as writers on episodes. Sometimes they would fight were over who would get to write this or that scene. "We don't fight that often," Benioff said. "But every now and then, if there was a big battle scene, or some big killing on 'Game of Thrones', we both wanted it. Those would be the fights about who will write the last half of the episode."

Now Benioff and Weiss are teaming up again for 3 Body Problem, a new sci-fi show that premieres on Netflix next week. For this endeavor, they've drafted True Blood producer Alexander Woo onto their team of showrunners, so now the arguments go three ways instead of two. "Sometimes we all agree and that's easy. Sometimes we disagree, and then we have to argue about it," Benioff said. "And for me and Dan, our experience has been that when we disagree on something, one person normally is more passionate about the argument and the person with the most passion wins.

"And when Alex joined us, we just kind of kept doing the same thing. We just split everything up between the three of us."

Will these arguments produce the same kinds of iconic scenes for 3 Body Problem that they did for Game of Thrones? Find out when season 1 drops on Netflix next Thursday, March 21.

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