DAN WEISS: That was the only debate. The scene where she first shows up is one of the best “holy shit” moments in the books. I think that scene is where the public response came from. But then . . .
DAVID BENIOFF: We can’t go into detail. Part of the reason we didn’t want to put it in had to do with things coming up in George’s books that we don’t want to spoil [by discussing them]. Part of it too was we knew we had Jon Snow’s resurrection coming up. Too many resurrections start to diminish the impact of characters’ dying. We wanted to keep our powder dry for that. And Catelyn’s last moment was so fantastic, and Michelle is such a great actress, to bring her back as a zombie who doesn’t speak felt like diminishing returns.
Another popular mythological aspect of the books that was pared back was the direwolves, which play a larger role in Martin’s novels. The issue with the direwolves wasn’t a storytelling problem, or a lack of interest by the writers, but purely a technical challenge. Once the wolves became larger than ordinary wolves, the show struggled to find ways to portray them in a convincing manner. After using dogs in the first season, the production subsequently filmed real wolves and used CG to make them larger. Even so, there was a degree of uncanniness to their shots that became difficult to disguise.
DAN WEISS: We did some testing, and at a certain point they look unreal. We reached a nice balance with them.
DAVID BENIOFF: With dragons you get some leeway. You don’t say, “Well, that doesn’t look like a real dragon.” And dragons are easier to animate since they don’t have fur.
DAN WEISS: With a wolf you have a million years of evolution telling you what they’re supposed to act like.
BRYAN COGMAN: The show had constraints and the wolves were very challenging to pull off in a way that looked good.
So what, then, did the direwolves mean? Their fates seemed loosely connected to that of each Stark. Jon Snow’s direwolf was Ghost, which was appropriate for a man who rose from the dead. Bran’s direwolf was Summer, the opposite of the supernatural winter force that Bran was destined to confront. Sansa’s direwolf, Lady, was killed by the Lannisters and then she was ensnared by them as well. Robb Stark’s Grey Wind was trapped and shot with crossbows just like his master. Rickon Stark’s Shaggydog was slain by men loyal to Ramsay Bolton, then the boy died by Ramsay’s arrow shortly thereafter. And Arya’s Nymeria was chased into the wild, where she found her strength and independence. (“That’s not you,” Arya told Nymeria when she was reunited with her wolf in season seven, echoing her own line—“That’s not me”—to her father in season one.)
BRYAN COGMAN: [Arya and Nymeria are] lone wolves. They can’t go back to the way things were. It was also a foreshadow for what Arya was going to encounter when she reunited with her family.
MAISIE WILLIAMS (Arya Stark): Nymeria has created her own world and created her own pack and wasn’t ready to be Arya’s pet. To be someone’s pet would reverse everything she’s learned. So they just regard each other and go their separate ways.
BRYAN COGMAN: The direwolves were supposed to mean more than they ended up meaning. A lot of plans for the direwolves ended up not coming to fruition. Even in the first season, there were a lot of direwolf scenes we had to cut even though we were just using dogs because the dogs couldn’t execute the scenes; it would just take too long.
That aside, I think the direwolves represent the spirit of the North and the soul of House Stark and the soul of those characters. It’s no accident Lady was killed and Sansa was left on her own, and it was no accident that Grey Wind was put in a cage, and it was no accident Nymeria found her independence and went her own way. But we never really wanted to lean too heavily into the spirit-animal trope of it all. And certainly in the books, the direwolves function in a different way. Arya and Jon are wargs in the books, and Sansa and Robb would have been except their wolves died—I don’t know that for a fact, but I assume so.
After season four, Martin decided to stop writing scripts for Thrones. He told the producers he needed to focus on finishing his novels.
DAVID BENIOFF: It wasn’t a contentious thing, it wasn’t a screaming match. He just felt like he needed to prioritize the book, and that made sense to us.
The showrunners had to figure out how best to use what they knew of Martin’s master plan to plot their remaining hours, and they emphasized the silver lining of their show surpassing the books.
DAN WEISS: We chose to see it as a great thing on both sides. There’s this amazing world George has created, and now there are two different versions out there. There’s no reason we can see why you can’t be thrilled and surprised and dismayed by both of these two different versions of this world.
Ultimately, Martin and the showrunners are passionate creatives grappling with a staggeringly complex tale in two very different mediums. Despite their occasional disagreements, each side is respectful of the other, even in private. Benioff and Weiss never fail to express the magnitude of their respect for Martin’s writing, while Martin is grateful for the show and says the showrunners did a great job overall despite aspects that he wishes were different.
DAVID BENIOFF: We don’t always agree on everything in the series, but we have a great relationship with him.
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN: One thing David and Dan did really right, that I couldn’t have done if I was the showrunner, is the vast majority of our Emmys are for below the line—costuming, set decoration, stunt work, and so on. They put together an incredible team of craftsmen, and some of them were new to the industry or without a lot of credits. If it were me, I would have done what most people would have done and picked people I’ve worked with before who are competent. But would they have been the extraordinary people David and Dan found?
Martin’s comment brings up a frequent point made by those interviewed for this book. Several cast and crew members emphasized that Benioff and Weiss never received enough public credit for their hands-on involvement with the nonwriting aspects of the production, from supervising filming to overseeing decisions made by a variety of departments. The showrunners received praise (and criticism) for story elements, but few outsiders realize how many other facets of the Thrones production likewise bore their fingerprints.
DEBORAH RILEY (production designer): David and Dan don’t get the credit they deserve for being the leaders that they are. They gathered a team of workaholic perfectionists who they trusted with their work. We all were allowed to get on with our jobs, but it was always their vision that we were trying to fulfill. They would have to approve everything; we wouldn’t put anything on set they had not seen. So the sheer volume of work they were presented with that they would have to comment on and provide advice about was phenomenal. I cannot bear to have them criticized.
SIBEL KEKILLI (Shae): Dan and David took really good care of us. They’d invited us to their house in Belfast to have Thanksgiving dinner with their families. They’d take two actors to dinner one night, then another two actors to dinner the next night. They really tried to make sure we had a good time when we had days off.
LENA HEADEY (Cersei Lannister): David and Dan were always there. They were there 24/7. They didn’t just leave and sit in an office. They were there.
But for Martin, being creatively involved with Game of Thrones—and commenting on it publicly—became increasingly difficult after season five. How can an author talk about, for instance, the Battle of the Bastards when he likely has his own very different, yet still unpublished, version of the same battle in his mind?
DAN WEISS: The differences between the show and the books became difficult to track in parallel. It’s almost like George was in a weird science fiction movie trying to keep two similar-but-different universes in his mind at the same time.
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN: It’s been an incredible ride, and almost all of it has been great. The show is the end for a lot of people. It’s not the end for me. I’m still deeply in it. I better live a long time, because I have a lot of work left to do.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A Detour to Dorne
Not all of Martin’s new characters from A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons were left only on the page. Producers added Dorne to the show as a new location and introduced Oberyn Martell’s trio of bastard daughters, the Sand Snakes, who sought vengeance for their father’s death. Even just adding the Sand Snakes, however, required some concessions. In the books, there are eight Sand Snakes. The show originally planned to introduce four and ended up with three—Obara, Nymeria, and Tyene. Oberyn’s paramour Ellaria Sand was similarly combined with another character to serve as Tyene’s mother. The result would be one of Thrones’ most unique storylines, but one that garnered mixed reactions and sometimes struggled to feel like an organic part of the show.
BRYAN COGMAN (co–executive producer): Dorne was always tricky. When you read the book, it’s essentially a spin-off within the book. It’s really compelling. It’s really interesting. But it’s an entirely new cast of characters, and it only really links up with the main storyline through Myrcella. For a long time, I didn’t think we were going to do it. Season five is not the time when you normally introduce twenty-five new characters.
DAVID BENIOFF (showrunner): There weren’t a lot of ways to cram it in. But it’s such an important place. Of all the places in Westeros you’d ever want to settle, the Dornish seem to have it figured out in terms of their approach to life. And Indira Varma, once you have someone of her caliber, you’re doubling down on that casting strength.
BRYAN COGMAN: I proposed that Jaime would be a good way in. You take one of our main characters and use that person as an audience surrogate into this new world and that might be a way that we can do a version of Dorne that fits in our framework and, frankly, within the time and budgetary constraints of the show.
Another advantage of adding Dorne was it gave the show an organic way to add more diverse actors to its cast. One longtime criticism of Thrones was that its core players were overwhelmingly white. It was a point that was raised more frequently during the show’s latter seasons, as Hollywood studios were increasingly urged to make on- and off-camera diversity a greater priority.
Casting director Nina Gold explained the team’s initial thinking to Vanity Fair’s Joanna Robinson: “Even though these are fantasy worlds, there are tribes, families, and dynasties. Once you’ve put one mark on the canvas for the Targaryens or the Starks, you really owe it to . . . the authenticity of trying to make them a family somehow. In the books, the Targaryens are these white, white people with silver hair and violet eyes. The Starks are kind of rough, like Northern English people. The Lannisters are golden, aren’t they? We really believed we were doing it like the books, basically.”
Jessica Henwick (Nymeria Sand), Keisha Castle-Hughes (Obara Sand), and Rosabell Laurenti Sellers (Tyene Sand) were cast as the Sand Snakes. Each of the actresses came from a different ethnic background and adopted her own twist on the Latin-inspired accent Pascal had created for Prince Oberyn. The trio trained for months to learn fighting and weapon skills.
JESSICA HENWICK (Nymeria Sand): Originally David and Dan planned to have Obara, Tyene, Nymeria, and Sarella—they wanted four sisters. Then they realized during casting that was going to be too many to introduce during a short period of time. When I auditioned they were thinking of cutting Nymeria and I was like, “Nooooo,” because as a fan that was the one I wanted. I auditioned two or three times, and Sarella, unfortunately, was lost.
KEISHA CASTLE-HUGHES (Obara Sand): I knew that season there would be a call for brown actors. My people, if you will, just kept pushing and annoying [casting director Nina Gold]. As soon as I got the part, we started training. A lot of my training was in the martial arts of wushu. It was maybe about five months of lead-up.
JESSICA HENWICK: My whip was a really scary weapon because you’re just as likely to injure yourself. I hit myself so many times. I hit Rosabell; I hit my younger sister across her cheek.
DAVE HILL: I remember them at dinner the night before we first shot the Sand Snakes. The girls were so excited. They’d been inventing backstories for themselves, and they were running them by David and Dan and me, and David was making up some of it on the spot. They were super thrilled.
INDIRA VARMA (Ellaria Sand): It was great to be inventing our own country, not just being visitors in King’s Landing. The previous season I felt like I was a guest in someone else’s show.
The Sand Snakes were introduced in a scene with Ellaria as they plotted how to best avenge Oberyn’s death. They also tortured a ship’s captain buried up to his neck in the sand with scorpions on his head to get information about Jaime Lannister coming to Dorne.
JESSICA HENWICK: It was a trial by fire from day one. Straightaway there’s a real actor buried up to his neck in the sand, real scorpions on his head, real whip, real camera, real crew—let’s go. I had to knock the bucket off the head of this guy with my whip. The crew got out riot shields to protect themselves. I remember the scorpion handler coming up to me and being like, “Please don’t kill my babies.”
INDIRA VARMA: I was so anxious about the scorpions I kept forgetting my lines.
DAVID BENIOFF: It was fun watching them together because they’re three half sisters and constantly fighting, but it’s the kind of family that if anyone else, like an outsider, comes in, they all band together and unify.
KEISHA CASTLE-HUGHES: It was interesting because I felt like the Sand Snakes moved as a unit. We didn’t really have individual storylines.
MARK MYLOD (director): It felt fine. They’re really good actors. But it was not the kick-ass introduction to such important characters in the novel that I wanted it to be. If I’m being honest, it was difficult to find the characters beyond the “kick-ass.” I was trying to find a sense of family, which is massively key to all the show’s characters. The balance between the intimate and the epic is exactly what’s so brilliant about Game of Thrones. We’d always been successful at creating those bonds so the audience could latch on to those relationships. It didn’t feel to me like it was gelling.
JESSICA HENWICK: It was always acknowledged that it was going to be very hard to give each of us a storyline. They had to introduce three characters all at once and differentiate them. When you’re limited to an introduction of two lines per character, and there’s four characters in the scene during our introduction, it’s hard to create a lasting impression. You kind of have to shove a character down the audience’s throat, and Game of Thrones’ success is in its multifaceted characters.
One element from that debut scene was changed in post-production. A leaked set photo revealed that Obara’s original breastplate armor had nipples. Costume designer Michele Clapton later admitted to New York magazine that the Batman Forever–like design was “slightly cheesy” and a mistake due to the structured molds that were used and weren’t noticed until filming was already under way. Ironically, one expression from Martin’s novels is “like nipples on a breastplate,” meaning that something is useless. Thanks to some CGI, the nipples were, um, tweaked.
Even so, critics struggled with the Dorne scenes. “Every time we flash to beautiful Dorne, they’re just angrily trying to get revenge for Oberyn with no space for nuance or surprise, so it ends up feeling as if we’re watching the same scene again and again,” wrote The Washington Post’s Travis M. Andrews. One scene singled out in particular was a fight at the House Martell palace, the Water Gardens. The setup was that Jaime and Bronn were infiltrating the palace seeking to kidnap/rescue Myrcella (Nell Tiger Free) when they were attacked by the Sand Snakes. In any other series, the sequence would have been perfectly suitable. But Thrones had set a very high bar for its fight scenes.
BRYAN COGMAN: The Water Gardens fight, as I conceived it, happened at night. That’s when you would sneak into a palace to steal someone. You’d do it at night.
DAVE HILL: It was a perfect storm. We had this gorgeous location, the Alcázar palace, but we weren’t allowe
d to shoot there at night. So we couldn’t have night infiltration, when you’d logically do it. But at least we could have a cool fight during the day, where you can see everything. Then we lost our stunt people a few days before, so we had to make do with what the actors had learned up until that point and cut around it. The Water Gardens fight was supposed to be much more elaborate. I remember Jeremy at the time not being happy with it.
JEREMY PODESWA (director): I actually don’t remember that. I do remember we thought we were going to be using the doubles a lot more than we did. The actresses were great. They had worked really hard and had become really proficient, so we used the doubles as little as possible.
JESSICA HENWICK: I was going back and forth every two days to do fight training. They always said, “You’re going to do most of [the fight] yourself.”
JEREMY PODESWA: The only “perfect storm” I remember was that we literally had a storm in the middle of it. A total deluge. The actors were getting drenched, and nothing matched. Finally [Bernadette Caulfield] was like, “Okay, stop,” because it just became so ridiculous. It was one of the rare times where we had to stop shooting and Bernie admitted defeat in the face of an uncontrollable act of God.
JESSICA HENWICK: It was definitely drizzling? I don’t remember it pouring. . . .
Producers originally planned more Dorne scenes in season five but later cut down the storyline.
DAVE HILL: We thought it would be a fun adventure, but it fell prey to all the other storylines. Once we realized how long Daznak’s Pit and “Hardhome” were going to take to shoot, we realized one storyline had to be cut down a bit.
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