The Dorne thread was quickly tied up early in season seven, with each of Oberyn’s children and Ellaria meeting various tragic fates (which are discussed in more detail later). But for the producers, the fan reaction to the Dorne scenes seemed to confirm what they’d initially suspected: It’s extremely difficult for a television show to add several cars onto a moving train that’s already halfway to its destination.
DAVID BENIOFF: There are times I’m watching shows, or even reading books, where I’m wondering, “Why are we spending time with these characters we don’t really know or care about when I want to be with that person instead?” The big lesson was there are characters who mean so much to us and that’s who we want to spend time with. It’s their journeys we’re most curious about seeing where they go.
DAN WEISS: In a book you can branch out into a whole different world. But if you do that in television, for whatever reason, a different set of rules apply. I’m sure it would have been fascinating to build out a proper Dorne, but the time it would take would come at the expense of what we needed to cover.
BRYAN COGMAN: There’s a lot of great work in those Dorne sequences, and I think the way it all resolves—particularly in the scene with Lena and Indira in the prison cell—is very interesting and messy and compelling. Ultimately, it was hard to make it feel like something other than an offshoot. It was a lesson in how much you can expand a TV show.
JESSICA HENWICK: It was definitely a frustrating feeling, like there’s so much potential here, and a lot of the stuff that we shot didn’t make the final cut. It was hard. But overall, given the size of the character, I’ve been very happy with how it came out. It was still so worth it.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Running on Faith
Game of Thrones didn’t really do “themes.” The writers thought about their show in terms of individual characters and storylines, and there were so many of each scattered across Westeros and Essos that the idea of trying to tie a bunch of threads together to form some kind of unifying idea was unworkable and, arguably, unnecessary.
But season five had a theme.
“A major theme of that season was the old world colliding with the new and these fundamentalist thinkers vying for power,” Bryan Cogman said. “The Sparrows were fundamentalists. . . . The Sons of the Harpy were fundamentalists who turn to terror tactics to oust an occupier. . . . Members of the Night’s Watch who objected to Jon Snow trying to bring the Wildlings from Hardhome are fundamentalists.”
Melisandre too was a religious fundamentalist, one whose faith had devastating consequences. And Arya wrestled with the cultlike orthodoxy of the House of Black and White.
Fans often think season five had a theme too, only a different one: Season five was “the dark one,” the season with some of the show’s grimmest and most disturbing subject matter, where popular characters suffered horribly. The dive into darkness wasn’t an accident and followed classic story structure. The most dire moment for a traditional hero, when all seems lost, is always at the end of act two of three. Season five likewise concluded roughly two-thirds of the way through Thrones’ run. (A final act typically has the hero, having learned from their setbacks, rising to conquer their greatest challenge or succumbing to their flaws—just as Thrones’ major characters did in the final three seasons.)
“We knew in the writing and execution that season five was our darkest and most troubling season,” Cogman said. “We put our characters through hell, but it’s a very carefully thought-out hell. Season five was meant to break a lot of these characters down.”
In King’s Landing, Cersei thought she could use the power of the Sparrows to the crown’s advantage. Then their leader, the High Sparrow (Jonathan Pryce), turned the tables.
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN (author, co–executive producer): The Sparrows are my version of the medieval Catholic Church, with a fantasy twist. Instead of the Trinity—the father, the son, and the holy ghost—you have the Seven, one god with seven aspects. In the Middle Ages you had periods where you had very worldly and corrupt popes and bishops who were not spiritual but were politicians. They were playing their own version of the game of thrones.
Having the legendary Pryce on set occasionally knocked the show’s producers and directors onto their heels.
MARK MYLOD (director): I was a massive fan of the show, but I didn’t have the résumé that would really support me being a director on it. I just really wanted to work with those writers and characters. On my first day, I turned up in Dubrovnik to join a location scout with all the department heads. I stood up on one of those ancient walls in Old Town with everybody waiting for me to say what to do, and I had no idea what was expected of me. I just felt absolute bloody blind terror. I just had to pull stuff out of my butt to pretend like I knew what I was talking about. Then my first take was of Jonathan as the High Sparrow, and it was his first big scene with Lena.
DAVE HILL (co-producer): During rehearsal, Jonathan asked to change some words. Usually on Thrones our response to actors who ask to do that is, “No.” We’ve thought about those words. No changing, no improvising, no adding to them. And Jonathan was making changes. I turned to Bryan: “That’s not what the line is. . . .” And Bryan glared at me. It was the closest he ever came to murdering me. Bryan went, “If you think I’m going to tell Jonathan Pryce he can’t cut words on his first day on our set, you’re crazy.”
MARK MYLOD: I love working with actors and directing them. But after Jonathan’s first take I didn’t have a single piece of direction, not one idea, apart from my jaw open on the floor at the absolute perfection of his first take, literally down to the movements of his feet. It was almost embarrassing how good he was.
DAVE HILL: Mark came up to the monitors: “Am I crazy, or did he just nail everything in that whole thing?” Nope, you’re totally right. Even Lena was a little nervous around Jonathan.
NATALIE DORMER (Margaery Tyrell): Jonathan Pryce was the best sparring partner any actor could ever hope to have. He has such an affable, self-deprecating, charismatic manner about him. The way Jonathan played the character came across so sincere. It was “Who’s bluffing who?” He’s not like any other man Margaery has had to handle, where she could just throw her sensuality at him or use their greed or ego against them. The High Sparrow indulges none of these things.
Handling Pryce was a cakewalk, however, compared to the show’s other intractable British silver-screen legend.
MARK MYLOD: I was also terrified of Diana Rigg, because my very first scene with her I asked her to do a very minor thing. Like, “Would it make sense if you close the door and walk a few paces before this moment?” She came back with some rebuttal about why she wanted to do it another way and then said: “Thank you! Go away!” I became a five-year-old boy. I could feel myself blushing and creeping back to my monitor, stripped of any kind of dignity or authority. So I enjoyed killing her later on.
JESSICA HENWICK (Nymeria Sand): Have you been hearing Diana Rigg stories? We had a scene. She walked onto the set, and she went, “I’m ready now!” A cameraman came over and went, “Well, okay, but we haven’t finished setting up.” She interrupted him and said, “Roll the cameras!” And she just started doing her lines. She did two takes, and then the guy came over and was like, “Great, now we’re going to do a close-up.” And she just stood up and she went, “I’m done!”
Now, she can’t walk fast. She has to be helped. So basically we just sat there and watched as Diana Rigg effectively did her own version of storming off the set, but it was at 0.1 miles per hour. She cracked me up. I loved her.
NATALIE DORMER: When you have someone who has that many accolades, you just shut up and watch. She had a very dry sense of humor and was aware of the parody of herself. Sometimes I think she was mischievous to see what she could get away with.
EMILIA CLARKE (Daenerys Targaryen): I only had one scene with her and was very blessed to have had that. Like with Peter, it was watching an acting master class. I kept thinking
: “Okay, not my line yet, I’m not just watching you—really! I’m acting with you. . . .”
DAVE HILL: When Miguel Sapochnik was directing Pryce and Rigg, they were kind of just fucking with him. I went to Miguel with a little performance note and he goes, “I’ve got Jonathan Pryce and an English dame on my hands right now, sit down, I have to deal with this.” They were batting him back and forth like a ball of yarn between two cats.
The High Sparrow was aided by the heartless Septa Unella (Hannah Waddingham), his devout servant, who tortured Cersei, urging her to “confess.”
HANNAH WADDINGHAM (Septa Unella): The director, Miguel Sapochnik—he’s a very intense man—he would come out from behind the camera and try to get me to do as little as possible; like, [I have the] the widest smile and most overactive face. He said, “Trust me, the least you do will be more terrifying.” He’d squeeze his cheeks together with his hands, going, “Less! Less!” and by the third or fourth time he did it, I was like, “Dude, seriously. I can’t do any less. You should have gotten a white dinner plate in a wimple.” But, of course, he was right. I was doing the least I’ve ever done, and it spoke the most.
There was also one scene where I may have given Lena an extra whack on the head with the spoon. The spoon was rubber, but still. You can see it in the show, when her jaw tenses and she looks up at me, like: I’m gonna get you after this. And, of course, she did, but it’s nothing you can print. It added a little something. We’ve been great pals ever since.
Across the Narrow Sea, Daenerys was on a winning streak. She conquered Slaver’s Bay, sacked Astapor, liberated Yunkai, and invaded Meereen, where she took residence in an eight-hundred-foot pyramid. Once again on Thrones, ruling proved far trickier than conquest. The harder Daenerys tried to reform the cities’ slave-based traditions, the more they rebelled against her.
One of Daenerys’s losses was particularly distressing. Her trusted protector and advisor Ser Barristan Selmy (Ian McElhinney) was slain by the terror group Sons of the Harpy. Daenerys took the loss hard. Actor Ian McElhinney took it hard as well. Selmy is still alive in Martin’s books, and McElhinney naturally assumed his character would continue further into the show. “I gave [Benioff and Weiss] some arguments of my own why I thought Barristan was kind of important in Daenerys’s story, important enough that he should stay in Daenerys’s story,” the actor told HuffPost.
IAN MCELHINNEY (Barristan Selmy): It proves you should probably not read the books [if you’re an actor on the show]. I was disappointed. But you have to accept—as I accepted—that the demands of TV are different than the demands of book writing. With TV there’s a pressure to create a number of high points. One of the big things about this series—it’s true in the books and even more true in the series—is the surprise element, the shocks. They had to keep that up because people expect that. You can’t predict anything, but what you can predict is that there will be surprises.
The writers killed off Ser Barristan partly to create a vacancy among Daenerys’s advisors. Three episodes later, Tyrion joined up with the Breaker of Chains (a meetup that has not yet happened in Martin’s books). McElhinney was pleased, however, that Ser Barristan at least went down with his sword in hand.
IAN MCELHINNEY: He had to be seen fighting. He’d been talked about as the greatest knight who ever was, so he had to fight. So that’s great that he did.
Interestingly, when asked his favorite Ser Barristan scene, McElhinney said it was from the show’s first season, when Joffrey unfairly fired the legendary knight from the Kingsguard. It’s rather fitting—and a credit to the show’s spot-on casting—that an actor who protested his dismissal in real life liked best the scene where his character was dismissed, took off his armor, threw it on the ground, and stormed off.
McElhinney’s reaction wasn’t entirely unique either. Benioff and Weiss say actors largely took their “death calls” well, but occasionally a cast member was clearly disappointed by the news.
DAVID BENIOFF (showrunner): Most of the time actors kind of knew when their time was up. Once we were ahead of the books and making those phone calls, some actors were stoic about it—“Oh, that’s cool.” Some were a little upset.
DAN WEISS (showrunner): I won’t name the actor, but there was one who protested vociferously.
DAVID BENIOFF: One person argued with us on the phone for a half hour and then wrote a long letter why it was a mistake and still talks about it on whatever dumb forums he’s on. But most people are great even when they’re disappointed.
Back in Westeros, Stannis marched his army toward Winterfell and was beset by a crippling winter storm that threatened to trap and starve tens of thousands of his men. The uptight would-be king; his wife, Selyse; and his mistress, Melisandre, were fundamentalists of the worst kind, fanatics who burned so-called heretics. But what happens when you’re a true believer in the Lord of Light and are told the only way to change the weather and save your army is to sacrifice your own daughter to your god?
DAVE HILL: There are a lot of people claiming to know the gods’ will and claiming to speak for god or gods. We like playing with the idea that the gods, if they exist, maybe have their own agenda and ulterior motives. Humans can glimpse them, but you can’t really ascribe human notions and actions and consequence to gods—that’s what makes them gods.
CARICE VAN HOUTEN (Melisandre): I thought, “This is the end of my sympathy point.” I knew my days as a friendly character were over. I knew the audience was going to hate me from then on. They didn’t like me in the first place, but that was really pushing it, and rightfully so. But at the same time I thought it was so bold and cruel and epic, even though it was awful.
LIAM CUNNINGHAM (Davos Seaworth): When I read the script, I thought, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” But it’s genius dramatically. When Stannis tells Davos to [leave their camp for Castle Black], you know you’re not getting that information for a very fucking good reason. I’ve had shouts from people on the street, “Why didn’t you stay?!” and I shout, “I tried!”
CARICE VAN HOUTEN: I don’t know how to play evil. The only thing I can do is play that this is for the greater good and my methods are not . . . friendly, and to think there’s something even worse out there and that I’m actually doing people a favor. If I thought about it too much I don’t know if I could do it, so I just had to go into a completely different zone.
Stannis couldn’t bring himself to tell his angelic young daughter, Shireen (Kerry Ingram), what he was going to do to her. So in the next scene, guards slowly led a confused Shireen through a crowd of soldiers. At first, the girl seemed uncertain of where she was going and why. Then she saw the funeral pyre and realized: Her own father had condemned her to die. Shireen called to her parents, begging them to save her.
Stannis killing his daughter was one of the most agonizing scenes in Thrones and one of the moments Martin had told the producers he was planning for The Winds of Winter (though the book version of the scene will play out a bit differently).
DAVID NUTTER (director): A lot of the screaming was ad-libbed. When Shireen is screaming and crying for her mother, we got that on location [rather than looping it in later] to add the emotional resonance. When the mother finally realizes how awful this is, it’s so powerful.
CARICE VAN HOUTEN: The girl was so sweet and cute, and we had fun behind the scenes. Another moment where you’re like, “What kind of job is this?”
LIAM CUNNINGHAM: There’s an old saying in Hollywood: “Don’t work with children or animals.” I found the opposite. Kids play for a living, that’s their job, and most of us, when we grow up, we put play to one side. Kids are experts at it. Kerry Ingram was incredibly impressive. She has this inner contentment about her, like an old soul. A lot of us aim for things. She’s not aiming. She walks on, and there’s just 100 percent truth when she speaks.
DAVE HILL: It was harder for the adults than it was for Kerry. She had bubbly kid energy. But Bryan r
efused to watch. He was like, “No, I have kids of my own. I cannot watch him burn a child.” While Stephen was like, “This is pretty rough, guys, even for Game of Thrones.”
After the brutal sacrifice came the gut-punch twist: The winter storm let up, but Stannis’s wife, Selyse, committed suicide and half of his army used the easing of the weather as a chance to desert him. The sacrifice of Shireen might have technically worked, but it had unintended consequences that left Stannis even worse off than before: mostly abandoned and entirely damned.
CARICE VAN HOUTEN: The moment I liked the most was after we had just burned Shireen. I think this is going to help us, it’s going to save us, and the snow is melting and she thinks it worked. Then someone comes up and says that it’s all gone to hell. I really loved the silent acting of thinking, “Oh, fuck!” and to show that with one look. My whole world is upside down. Those few human moments is what I’m better at, but I cannot complain because that’s not the character.
DAN WEISS: It’s impossible for us to see [Shireen’s death] through any other lens than how we view fanaticism. People who watch Game of Thrones don’t see the world through the same lens as Melisandre and Stannis. To the characters, magic works and is real. That’s something that’s fun about the genre as a whole; because you see the magic with your own eyes, it gives you a window into the heads of people who do and believe crazy things on faith. I can’t really get my head around how those people operate in our own world. But fantasy is a cockeyed window into the heads of people who would do something terrible for an irrational reason.
On the subject of prophecy, the showrunners were in lockstep with Martin’s books, where magic is never to be trusted. Cersei was haunted by the witch Maggy the Frog declaring her children would perish and that she would be overthrown by a “younger and more beautiful” queen. But like in the story of Oedipus, Cersei brought about her fate only by desperately trying so hard to avoid it.
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