Instead, Tyrion chose trial by combat, and Prince Oberyn Martell volunteered to serve as his champion. The Red Viper had been introduced in the season-four premiere along with his seductive paramour, Ellaria Sand. All season Martell had daringly antagonized the Lannisters, seeking vengeance against them and their murderous knight Ser Gregor Clegane for their war crimes against his family decades earlier. The fight would give the prince a chance to get his confession and revenge.
PEDRO PASCAL (Oberyn Martell): I was a true audience member of the show. When the audition came around, it had seemed unattainable. I got seventeen pages of sides and it was full of spoilers, so I was really upset the season was spoiled for me. So I put myself on tape and sent it in. I was really surprised when I heard back, and it gradually grew from there. Dan and David wrote this really generous email talking about the character and were very articulate, and it made a lot of sense to me.
DAVID BENIOFF: That was a role we were nervous about casting, as Oberyn embodies so many characteristics. He’s a favorite character from the books. He’s sexy and he’s got the swagger, yet he’s smart. He loves his family, and he’s sexual in all sorts of ways. And Pedro is just phenomenal.
PEDRO PASCAL: When the casting announcement was made, it scared the shit out of me. It was like, “The guys love him, the girls love him, he’s the most amazing human being in the world!” I was like, “Ahhh, thanks a lot. Set the bar a little higher.”
SIBEL KEKILLI: Actors who joined in the later seasons were nervous. Pedro Pascal was so nervous on set. I was taking care of him: “Hey, come on, we’re all a team here, we’re going to have a drink and you can join us.”
DAVID BENIOFF: The scene where Pedro tells Tyrion [he’ll fight for him against the Mountain] is the first scene Pedro had to shoot. It was just intense pressure for a guy who hasn’t been on the show before and he’s coming over and doing a brand-new character and his first scene is a seven-minute scene opposite Peter Dinklage.
DAN WEISS: “Welcome to the show, here’s your costume, now summarize the emotional apotheosis of your character—go!” He did a brilliant job of encapsulating everything about that character with no tricks or bells or whistles. He was so nervous about it, he wanted so badly to get it right. It took a long time to convince him that he had gotten it more than right. He thought we were being nice. He didn’t know us yet.
The “Mountain and the Viper” fight was filmed at a seaside amphitheater in Dubrovnik. But first, some obstacles needed to be cleared.
ALEX GRAVES (director): When we scouted the amphitheater, there were all these yachts out front. So we needed to make a deal to make sure the yachts weren’t there when we filmed. They all backed off a quarter mile so they wouldn’t be in the shot. Everyone agreed to do it—except one person.
Multiple people working on Thrones insisted this person was, in fact, actor Bruce Willis, and that the Die Hard star not only refused to move his yacht but attempted to disrupt filming by piloting the boat back and forth in front of the amphitheater once shooting was under way. Crew members called it an act of “yacht rage.” But the actor’s presence in Croatia during the time was not confirmed.
ALEX GRAVES: [The yacht] circled trying to say, “Fuck you, I’m in your shot,” a couple of times and we were all laughing because we were aimed away from the water at that time anyway.
BERNADETTE CAULFIELD (executive producer): I think that’s been blown up a little bit more than it probably really was. We never actually saw Bruce.
The fight sequence was shot over three days, with Icelandic strongman Hafþór Björnsson having stepped into the role of Ser Gregor “the Mountain” Clegane. On the set, it’s surreal to watch Björnsson stomp around, especially when he’s costumed in armor that gives him even greater bulk and height. You feel slightly dizzy and confused, as if you’re somehow looking at a special effect that’s been rendered into real life; a human version of the show’s supersized direwolves.
HAFÞÓR BJÖRNSSON (Gregor “the Mountain” Clegane, seasons 4–8): People hire me based on being a good, hardworking guy who happens to be six foot nine and 450 pounds, and they trust me to stay true to the script whilst adding my own personal touches.
RORY McCANN (Sandor “the Hound” Clegane): One time Hafþór ordered chicken and they brought him two breasts of chicken. He just looked up and said: “No, a chicken. Not just chicken. A chicken.” Then he’d be eating a couple hours later again. He’s a beast.
For Martel to take on such a fearsome opponent, the stunt team created a unique style of fighting for the Red Viper unlike anything previously seen in the show.
ALEX GRAVES: I wanted to see somebody airborne and moving and spinning musically, like in a dance, to convey the Sinatra-esque style of the character. The style is meant to give the audience the impression he could win against this gigantic opponent. Because when you look at the Mountain you figure he’s going to kill him. And Pedro was such a spectacularly likable personality and such a smooth operator, you could put some doubt in the audience’s mind.
PEDRO PASCAL: It was really intense. We were in the arena that was exposed to sunlight for the entire day, and I was covered in armor and flying around like a wasp. Just flying around this [huge] guy, who literally had a sword that went from the ground to my chin.
HAFÞÓR BJÖRNSSON: Working with Pedro Pascal was great; he’s a good guy, and we had some good times between takes. But shooting was extremely difficult, both physically and mentally demanding. Going over everything again and again in full armor and high temperatures. Tensions were running high during the most intense filming, when the actors and most everyone were working sixteen to eighteen hours per day. All the training with swordmaster C. C. Smiff—several weeks, in fact—really paid off. I think the audience doesn’t really realize how much work went into making Game of Thrones.
ALEX GRAVES: We wanted to misdirect the audience step by step. So throughout the training, I would go over and say, “Can you kick him there?” if it seemed like the Mountain or the Viper was doing too well.
DAN WEISS: It’s not just people hacking at each other with spears and swords; it’s the culmination of Oberyn’s twenty years of anger and hatred and thirst for vengeance coming to a head in this amazing set piece.
For a couple of tense moments, Oberyn appeared to defeat his rival. The Mountain, severely wounded, collapsed to the stone floor. Instead of finishing him off, however, Oberyn insisted on trying to get the Mountain to confess his sins against the Martell family. Victory at hand, Oberyn was distracted by Ellaria’s proud smile for just one second.
DAN WEISS: It’s a very classic tragic-flaw situation, the character who can’t leave well enough alone. He can’t help poking the hornet’s nest. He does it with great amusement throughout the season. He finally does it to the wrong person at the wrong time. The results left a big giant mess on the floor of our set.
PEDRO PASCAL: He got too close and was delivered by his own passions. Because ultimately, it is about defeating this man who raped and killed his sister, but before he can do that, before he can end this man’s life, he needed a confession. He needed to hear it.
The Mountain swept Oberyn’s leg, climbed on top of him, and then he . . . well, you saw what happened.
ALEX GRAVES: Everybody says, “Oh my God, the shot where his head explodes!” You actually don’t see the head explode. It’s a sound effect, but what you do see is the split second before it exploded. And a lot went into building the head that could be pressed and begin to cave in. We had tubes for blood and everything. At first, we forgot to add bone, and he started to squeeze and the whole head caved in.
HAFÞÓR BJÖRNSSON: The VFX and prosthetics team did such a great job that it felt in a way like I was actually crushing someone’s head in.
INDIRA VARMA (Ellaria Sand): He was doing so brilliantly in the fight. It was all going his way, and he just lost it, didn’t he?
ALEX GRAVES: Then after the Mountain fell back we laid differ
ent types of meat over the stunt actor’s face. You’re so far away in the show, you don’t know it’s meat. It’s just all so horrifying.
PEDRO PASCAL: Interestingly, I had this great conversation with Lena Headey about Oberyn’s journey. Even though it ends badly, he still hears the confession, you know? I don’t even need to go on after that once it’s been said out loud. And the ecstasy of achieving that, even though it’s being achieved in the instance of my demise.
It seemed as though Tyrion was fated for execution once again. Then Jaime, in keeping with his lifelong devotion to looking out for his younger brother, freed him from the black cells. But just like Oberyn, Tyrion could not leave well enough alone. He had unfinished business with his father. And he discovered Tywin was not alone.
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN: Sometimes people just get pushed too far. Sometimes people break. I think Tyrion reached that point. He’d been through hell, faced death over and over again and been betrayed, as he sees it, by all the people that he’s tried to take care of and tried to win the approval of. He’d been trying to win his father’s approval all his life and, despite his misgivings, fell in love with Shae.
SIBEL KEKILLI: This girl is in the bed with the father. And Tyrion came in this room, and Shae has to say, “My lion!” I refused to shoot it. “Please don’t do this.”
ALEX GRAVES: It was very hard to kill Shae. I don’t think any sequence has left me so exhausted.
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN: [Tyrion is] strangling her slowly, and she’s fighting, trying to get free. He could let go at any time. But his anger and his sense of betrayal is so strong that he doesn’t stop until it’s done. That’s probably the blackest deed that he’s ever done.
ALEX GRAVES: The way Tyrion ends up after he’s killed her is the worst part of the scene in that he’s kind of hanging off the chain he uses to choke her. He was meant to kill her on the bed. But we were rehearsing, and Peter threw himself off the bed and held on to the chain even though he landed on the side of the bed. He said, “What if I just keep going from here?” Peter came off the bed and just kept pulling. So he was killing her without having to face her and it was awful, and we were going for awful.
SIBEL KEKILLI: People keep asking me: “Did Shae love Tyrion?” For me it was clear. She loved Tyrion. If she didn’t she would have left him when he lost his power or when Varys offered her money. He married another girl. She loved Sansa. In the end it was too much pain.
My explanation is that of course she knew all the power games between the family. But she’s a lowborn and didn’t have the power. She didn’t have any choice. She had to be with someone who would protect her. Tywin and Cersei somehow forced her—“You have to help us or you’re going to die.” So what’s the next step for a lowborn girl in that situation? She can be a prostitute, or she can be a lover to this powerful guy, and that would be Tywin.
Tyrion, armed with a crossbow, surprised his father on the toilet. Even when confronted by the son he thought was in prison, the stern Lannister patriarch was almost entirely unflappable.
ALEX GRAVES: I remember trying to find a piece of wall because I wanted that shot of Tyrion walking to the bathroom. You couldn’t just cut to the next thing right after Shae’s murder. I wanted the drama of six seconds of him walking to the next thing with the crossbow. People were like, “With all the money being spent on this show, why does Graves need a freaking wall?” Because you need it.
Tywin called Shae a “whore.” Despite having just murdered Shae, Tyrion warned his father not to disrespect her by saying “that word again. . . .”
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN: Lord Tywin was convinced that since he didn’t love Tyrion, no one could love Tyrion. Shae’s obviously some lower-class girl who’s just trying to get the dwarf into bed because he was a Lannister so she could become a lady and have money and live in a castle—basically the equivalent of being a whore. She’s just fucking him for possession of status. Tywin is trying to teach Tyrion a lesson in that regard, and so he keeps using the word “whore,” which is like pouring salt into his wound. Tyrion tells him, “Don’t say that word again,” and he says that word again. At that moment, Tyrion’s finger pushed on the trigger.
PETER DINKLAGE: Tyrion is grief-stricken about what he just did, and Tywin doesn’t give a shit . . . that’s the finger that fires.
Martin added that Tywin was killed not just because of his words in the moment, and his dreadful treatment of his son in general, but due to something quite specific he had taught Tyrion many years before.
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN: It’s very much Lord Tywin’s philosophy that you don’t make threats and then fail to carry them out. That’s an important thing he drilled into Tyrion since his youth. You threaten someone and then they defy you, and you don’t carry out your threat, who’s going to believe your threats?
PETER DINKLAGE: I loved working with Charles Dance. I loved their relationship too, as horrible as it was. It’s so loving in a way within a fucked-up relationship. God, I sound like somebody who was abused and says it’s their own fault! I just loved how Charlie played it. He respected Tyrion, but he just couldn’t help it.
CHARLES DANCE (Tywin Lannister): Tyrion was a continuous reminder, as far as Tywin is concerned, of the one area he’s failed in. Especially in fifteenth-, sixteenth-century Europe, any imperfection—whether it’s dwarfism, being blind, a child born unperfected—ideally, you smother them, get rid of them, put them in a bucket. He let Tyrion live. To his astonishment, Tyrion is the brightest of his three children, the whiniest, and the cleverest, and that’s a continual [annoyance]. The little shit shouldn’t possess all these qualities. Those are the qualities that I would admire in him if he weren’t a dwarf, but the fact that he’s a dwarf is a continual reminder of his failure.
It’s horrible. But I’m not one of these actors that tries to find the good in a character. If a character is a shit, he’s a shit and you play him full-on as a shit. Don’t try and make him nice. Peter is extraordinary. I just would have loved to play some scenes with him where I don’t treat him like shit, you know?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Biggest Show in the World
Game of Thrones wasn’t an overnight success, nor did any particular episode or season cause the series to explode into the phenomenon it became. The rise of Thrones was gradual yet unceasing. It wasn’t entirely unlike the growth of Daenerys’s dragons—each year Thrones and its fandom got bigger and wilder, until one day it ruled the world.
By the end of season four, Thrones was HBO’s most popular show of all time, with nearly twenty million US viewers watching each week across all the network’s platforms and tens of millions more viewing around the globe. Thrones had also earned the dubious honor of becoming the world’s most illegally downloaded series (by one estimate, the season-eight premiere was illicitly viewed by fifty-four million people).
Awards piled up too. Thrones would eventually take home fifty-nine Primetime Emmy awards, the most ever given to a drama or comedy series, including four wins for best drama and an equal number for Dinklage in the Outstanding Supporting Actor category.
Merchandising took off as well, with HBO approving dozens of official products. There were Thrones craft beers, wines, bobbleheads, mugs, figurines, games, and so many T-shirts (even Ser Pounce had his own shirt). Composer Ramin Djawadi launched the Game of Thrones Live Concert Experience, a spectacular global touring show that combined a live orchestra performance and special effects. Terms like khaleesi, the Red Wedding, winter is coming, and Dothraki became everyday references. Parents named their newborns after characters, such as Arya and Daenerys.
For any city where Thrones was filmed, the show was a godsend of revenue and tourism. Dubrovnik became so overrun with Thrones fans, the King’s Landing stand-in started limiting visitors to its ancient walls in 2017, while a report from Northern Ireland in 2018 calculated that Thrones delivered $40 million a year in local tourism dollars.
The show’s cre
ators and cast, most of whom had little to no experience with being a celebrity, were given a crash course in the perks and detriments of fame.
PILOU ASBÆK (Euron Greyjoy): I’d acted for fifteen years in Denmark and in international productions. I’d worked with Morgan Freeman, Scarlett Johansson, Kirsten Dunst—big-ass stars. It wasn’t until I joined Thrones that people were like, “Fuck yeah, bro, we love you.”
I was at the Chilean airport, and one of the customs people looked at me and goes, “Greyjoy?” Then they closed the border at the airport in Santiago so we could take photos. For fifteen minutes no one could enter their country! I was like, “Holy fucking shit, this is massive.” I couldn’t imagine how it was for Kit or Nikolaj. It was the biggest show in the world.
Such fan encounters were almost always positive, the actors said.
LIAM CUNNINGHAM (Davos Seaworth): People were always happy to see Davos. He could do no wrong, and people confused me with him. It’s fantastic to walk around and get that reaction.
KRISTIAN NAIRN (Hodor): People don’t believe you’re real; they see you as the character. You get Hodors yelled. But Thrones fans tend to be respectful. Everyone is super chill, even the slightly annoying ones.
JACK GLEESON (Joffrey Baratheon): Most people separate the character and the person. Nobody ever said a mean thing to me. People would say, “Are you okay? I hear you get bullied on the street.”
GEMMA WHELAN (Yara Greyjoy): It’s so, so rare that I’m recognized, but when I am it’s really nice. They say I’ve made their day, but I think they’ve made my day! It works both ways.
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