Game of Thrones showrunners used ChatGPT to play prank on 3 Body Problem star

Back when they were making Game of Thrones, showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss developed a reputation for pranking their actors. They gave a fake script to Kit Harington where Jon Snow gets horribly burned. They made Rose Leslie (Ygritte) think she was going to have to sing on camera, and in their masterpiece, they had John Bradley (Sam Tarly) go in for a costume fitting even though they never actually intended him to wear this ridiculous outfit onscreen:

Whether you think these pranks are hilarious or cruel probably depends on your point of view. I tend to lean more towards hilarious, and the actors seem to take them in stride; John Bradley joined Benioff and Weiss for their next big show — the sci-fi epic 3 Body Problem on Netflix — so he couldn't have been too bruised over it.

Benioff and Weiss, now working with co-showrunner Alexander Woo, have kept up the pranks on 3 Body Problem, which aired its first season earlier this year. As Benioff and Weiss explained to The Hollywood Reporter, they had ChatGPT generate a three-page monologue about a swimming pool and then told star Eiza González (Auggie) she had to learn it by the next day. “It did involve her learning like 50 or 60 digits of Pi,” Weiss said.

By this point in their careers, Benioff and Weiss' reputation precedes them, so the joke didn't get very far. Bernadette Caulfield, who worked as an executive producer on Game of Thrones before following Benioff and Weiss to 3 Body Problem, gave them up. “Bernie was so tired, at that point she was like, ‘I don’t have the energy to pretend fake things are happening because there are 500 real things that are happening,'” Weiss said. “She told [González], ‘No you don’t have to learn a monologue about a swimming pool that lasts three pages.'”

There are two more seasons of 3 Body Problem left to go, although we don't have release dates for either of them as of yet. A heady sci-fi drama about Earth's first contact with an extraterrestrial species, 3 Body Problem is a million miles away from Game of Thrones in terms of content, although they share an unblinking ambition that has me excited to see what comes next.

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