BRYAN COGMAN: We knew where we were going with Theon and Sansa for the next three, four seasons. The viewer didn’t know that. And the nature of a lot of criticism these days is reactive. You write something as you’re experiencing it for the first time and then you publish. Once you have experienced the full arc, the reasoning behind that scene made more sense.
DAVID BENIOFF: That was the thing that was slightly frustrating, was the idea we were responding to the criticism and beefed up the female roles—that’s blatantly untrue. We can take criticism, and certainly we’ve gotten our share of it. But what happened later was not a response.
SOPHIE TURNER (Sansa Stark): Everybody was just sympathetic. I had more “You’re my favorite character” than ever before, which is amazing, because before I used to get, “You’re my least favorite character.”
Critics of the scene counter that the victorious outcome of Sansa’s storyline didn’t address their primary concerns. Actress Jessica Chastain made headlines by tweeting about the scene, “Rape is not a tool to make a character stronger. A woman doesn’t need to be victimized in order to become a butterfly.” While Slate’s Inkoo Kang wrote, “There was something brashly truthful about season one’s reminder that royal wombs have historically always been currency and the dehumanization of the women attached to them considered collateral damage, as well as season two’s candor-via-Cersei during the Battle of the Blackwater that women’s bodies are considered spoils in wartime. . . . In its inspirational or sympathetic modes for its female characters, Game of Thrones could be powerful storytelling. But sexual assault is a storyline (or spectacle) that the show’s never gotten right—because rape, or the threat thereof, is used as an instrument to get from Point A to Point B, rather than an event deserving its own focal point.”
BRYAN COGMAN: For many, the scene will never work and they’ll never like it. But the scene led to a larger cultural conversation that I think was very important.
That broader discussion focused on the depiction of violence against women in Hollywood productions in general, as well as on Thrones in particular. It was a topic that had circled the show ever since Daenerys’s wedding night in the series premiere. It was likewise a growing topic in media circles, as TV critics increasingly called dramas out for showing sexual violence in ways they felt were exploitative or unnecessary. “Martin, Benioff, and Weiss could conjure dragons, but not a world in which men could be the targets of female desire,” wrote Esquire’s Gabrielle Bruney in 2019. “They brought White Walkers to terrifying life, but couldn’t consider sexual assault as anything more than a provocative plot point. This failure has thrown a pall over seven seasons of otherwise great television, and it’s a sin that threatens to limit the show’s watchability in future years, as audiences tolerate less and less chauvinism in their entertainment.”
Thrones insiders felt one reason their show received such criticism was, ironically, because they had so successfully created and evolved so many strong female characters in the first place. Daenerys, Cersei, Brienne, Arya, and Sansa had all become pop culture icons with their own dedicated and protective fandoms. Each was fully realized and nothing like the other, as well as unlike any other characters on TV.
MICHAEL LOMBARDO (former HBO programming president): Dan and David have never been two people who pushed nudity or sexual content to titillate or increase viewers. This was also a show that had more kick-ass, unique female characters than anywhere in the television landscape. So I think the reaction struck us as, “Oh, could we be more mindful of this? Let’s learn from this and ask hard questions.” I think it was partly because the show became so successful and widely watched that it began to draw viewers who came to the show for great drama and it didn’t feel right to them, and I understand that. It was wounding and at the same time started a conversation that we continue to have about how we deal with nudity and sex on-screen.
Many of the scenes that provoked controversy also stemmed from a fundamental challenge faced by Thrones’ writers—how to balance an authentic depiction of savage medieval times with the ideals of a modern television audience. How much should Game of Thrones reflect our world versus a fantasy realm based on Europe’s Dark Ages, with all its accompanying historical horrors, which Martin sought to illuminate? Other dramas in warlike settings, such as Starz’s Outlander, have wrestled with the same issue. Turner told Rolling Stone in 2019 that she thought “the backlash [to the scene] was wrong” given that the show was staying true to its medieval inspiration. Several of her costars similarly said that Thrones was sometimes unfairly criticized for the handling of its female characters.
GWENDOLINE CHRISTIE (Brienne of Tarth): A lot of this show is inspired by actual historical events, and that’s what’s occurring with the women. Women have been treated appallingly in history. Men have too. Human beings have. The show shines a light on women with an exploration of female characters that has rarely been approached before, and I applaud that. Yes, those scenes are difficult, and they should be difficult.
EMILIA CLARKE (Daenerys Targaryen): It pained me to hear people taking Game of Thrones out of context and doing an antifeminist spin. It showed the range that happened to women and depicted real scenarios. Ultimately it showed that women are not only equal but have a huge amount of strength. Game of Thrones showed women in so many different stages of development, from having zero power or rights to women who are queens and are literally unstoppable.
NATALIE DORMER (Margaery Tyrell): The female characters are three-dimensional, fleshed out, often antiheroines as well as heroines. They are as complex and contradictory as the men are. In characterization, yes, Game of Thrones is completely feminist. What might occasionally be lost sight of is there’s a lot of the darker elements of human nature in the real world. Physical violence, misogyny, and rape are not fantastic issues. The reason Thrones is such a strong show is because it’s so real. If you want pure escapism, that’s fine, but then you probably should not be watching Game of Thrones.
MAISIE WILLIAMS (Arya Stark): It’s always been a constant debate because women are treated badly on the show, but it’s the same as the boys and the girls and the men and the animals. I get it that people don’t want to watch scenes like that. But that’s the show we’ve made. . . . I get upset when animals get slaughtered. People are like, “But this is worse than that!” and I never understood that. I think everybody’s allowed to be upset about what they’re upset by.
Though Martin wasn’t on board with season five’s changes to Sansa’s storyline, the author has long defended the inclusion of sexual violence in A Song of Ice and Fire as a necessary story element.
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN: The books reflect a patriarchal society based on the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages were not a time of sexual egalitarianism. It divided people into three classes, and they had strong ideas about the roles of women. One of the charges against Joan of Arc that got her burned at the stake was that she wore men’s clothing—that was not a small thing back then. There were, of course, strong and competent women, but that didn’t change the nature of the society they were in.
There are people who will say to this: “Well, he’s not writing history, he’s writing fantasy, he put in dragons, he should have made an egalitarian society.” But just because you put in dragons doesn’t mean you can put in anything you want. I wanted my books to be strongly grounded in history and show what medieval society was like. I was also reacting to what a lot of fantasy was like. They do what I call the Disneyland Middle Ages—princes and princesses and knights in shining armor—but they didn’t want real consideration of what those societies meant and how they functioned.
To be nonsexist, does that mean you need to portray an egalitarian society? That’s not our history. That’s something for science fiction. Even twenty-first-century America isn’t egalitarian. There are still barriers against women.
And then there’s the whole issue of sexual violence. But if you’re going to write about war—
which I’m writing about, and which is what almost all epic fantasy is about—and you just want the cool battles and heroes killing a lot of orcs and don’t portray [sexual violence], there’s something fundamentally dishonest about that. Rape, unfortunately, is part of war today. It’s not a strong testament to the human race, but I don’t think we should pretend it doesn’t exist. I want to portray struggle. Drama comes out of conflict. If you portray a utopia, you probably wrote a pretty boring book.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Playing Dead
George R. R. Martin’s A Dance with Dragons revealed the surprising death of Jon Snow. The Night’s Watch lord commander was betrayed and assassinated by a contingent of his own men after he let thousands of Wildlings south of the Wall to protect them from the onset of winter. Just like Ned Stark, Jon Snow was killed because he stayed true to his humanity.
But since Martin’s readers did not yet know whether Jon Snow was going to remain dead in the books when it came time for Game of Thrones to stage his assassination in the season-five finale, the show’s producers decided to keep the character’s season-six resurrection a secret.
That sounds simple, right? Yet convincing the world that the leading man on TV’s most popular series was really gone required an elaborate two-year deception that went to exorbitant lengths even by Thrones standards and put Kit Harington under around-the-clock pressure.
The first stage was planning Jon Snow’s death scene. When the lord commander is stabbed by his men, one after another, like Julius Caesar, how definitive should the character’s fate appear?
BRYAN COGMAN (co–executive producer): It seemed cheap to have it end with, “Is he dead or isn’t he?” You could have done a Princess Bride thing—he’s “mostly dead.” But the show has a precedent for the Lord of Light resurrecting a dead person before. So if we were going to kill him, we were going to really kill him. The decision was made to make that explicitly clear. So if anyone asked if he’s dead, saying “He’s dead” was not really a lie.
DAN WEISS (showrunner): To anyone watching the scene, it’s not ambiguous what happens. His pupils dilate as life leaves his body, which apparently is what happens.
The season-five scripts were sent to the cast with Jon Snow dying in the final scene: “The brothers retreat, leaving Jon to die alone on the ground, bleeding out,” read the script. “The light goes out of his eyes as we fade on season five.”
When Harington read those words, he thought the producers might be really killing off his character. But he had been fooled into believing a fake scene was real before, back in season one. He wasn’t going to give the showrunners the satisfaction of calling them up all worried.
KIT HARINGTON (Jon Snow): I never ask them anything. And I think they left me hanging for a bit just to see if I would ask. I was with the whole cast, doing the pessimistic thing, saying, “I really think this is it, I think I’m dead, it’s been a good ride.” They were like, “No, fuck off, you’re not.” And then we started theorizing. The main point that people seemed to circle back to, and I agreed with them on this, is why would there be this whole arc about his mother if that was never going to be relevant information because he died before finding out?
OWEN TEALE (Alliser Thorne): I thought, “I’m loving this because they’re pushing my character.” I thought, “They’re either going to really invest in Thorne and he’s going to take over Castle Black, or it will mean his end.” I liked either of those options. I remember thinking that I hoped Jon really was dead, because if you play the card of the magic too much, then the credibility of the whole thing drops a little.
A few days into filming season five, Harington was working at the Castle Black set when David Benioff and Dan Weiss asked him to go for a walk.
KIT HARINGTON: I got quite nervous. It could have been the walk that said, “Yeah, listen, dude, you’re dead, you’re not in next season.” Or, “You’re going to take a season off, but you might be this or might be that.” I didn’t know if I’d be recast as a CGI wolf, and I’d just be a voice-over, and I thought that would be really shit. Or I would be dead as a zombie guy, and that would be shit as well. I didn’t know what.
Checking over their shoulders, David said: “You are now going to know this. Me and Dan, we know this. About three of the producers know this. And George knows this. Now you’re going to know this. And you can’t tell anybody. Not your mom, not your dad, not your family—not anybody. You can’t tell anybody.”
I’m like, “Okay.”
“You are back next season; you are alive. Melisandre brings you back, and you’ve got a shitload to do next season. You have a really heavy season.”
Dan turned to David and said, “He’s going to tell Rose, isn’t he?” So she was allowed to know.
At first, Harington was relieved and elated. Then reality set in. His castmates had seen him walking with the showrunners and would assume Jon Snow’s death had been discussed. All of a sudden, Harington had two acting jobs on Game of Thrones: one while he was playing Jon Snow in front of the cameras and another when he was offstage playing a dejected actor.
KIT HARINGTON: I went back into the room with all the Night’s Watch guys. Going in, knowing this thing—they had all seen me go on this walk—I had to say, “Yeah, I’m dead.” I had to lie to all my friends. I felt really wrong about it. I had to lie to a lot of close friends and cast members and crew I’m family with, and I don’t like lying.
KRISTOFER HIVJU (Tormund Giantsbane): I was shocked when I read the scripts. Like, “Oh my God.” Then Kit was like, “This is my last year, I’m going to do different projects.” He was so definite. He was lying so good to everyone.
KIT HARINGTON: Sophie Turner, bless her, wrote me a really long letter about how much she loved working with me. That made me chuckle. She bought it hook, line, and sinker.
SOPHIE TURNER (Sansa Stark): He took me aside on a night out and was like, “Look, this is it, I’m done.” And I think he genuinely thought that? I don’t know if he was bullshitting me or not. He probably was, knowing him.
KRISTOFER HIVJU: I remember Maisie was like: “Tell me: Are you lying?” He said: “I’m sorry, I’m dead, I’m out of this, this is my last season.” So I was very unsure.
DAVID BENIOFF (showrunner): Even Emilia called him, and he was keeping up the pretense.
KIT HARINGTON: Liam Cunningham didn’t believe it, though. He told me to fuck off from the start.
LIAM CUNNINGHAM (Davos Seaworth): Yeah, I told him to fuck right off. “You don’t need to tell me the truth, but fuck off.” I just didn’t see them doing two Ned Starks. He was much too valuable. I never doubted for a moment he’d be back.
When it came time to film Jon Snow’s murder, the deception continued on the set. Even the finale’s director, David Nutter, didn’t know Jon Snow was coming back. After wrapping his “final” scene, Harington was put in the supremely awkward position of having to give a farewell speech to the cast and crew.
KIT HARINGTON: Genuinely no one knew at the end of season five. They had all been told I was dead. David Nutter told the crew, “This is Kit’s last season,” and I had to do a fake goodbye speech. I couldn’t do a big weepy “I love you all, this has been amazing.” I said, “It’s been great, guys, thank you,” and I got the fuck out. So I gave the game away there a bit. Some of them bought it, some of them didn’t.
DAVID NUTTER (director): He told the crew how much he cared about them and how much he would miss them. How this was really his first major job as an actor, and he gained so many relationships and friends. He said how much he cared about them and how that part of his life would now be an empty part. It was very powerful.
KIT HARINGTON: It was like being at your own funeral. It was awful. It was the worst acting I’ve ever done, and that’s saying something.
After the finale was shot, Harington decided there were a few people he felt morally obligated to let in on the secret. When an actor leaves a TV sho
w, his career move can impact many others in their orbit.
KIT HARINGTON: At first I thought I would find it fun—this will be a fun game. The more it went on, the more I felt like I was betraying people. So I did end up letting people in slowly. Because what you’re saying to your friends and family is: “I’m out of a job next year and I’m looking for new work.” It’s like saying to your mum and dad, financially, this is where the money stops from Thrones. So my mum, dad, and brother, I told them what the deal is. “I am still in Thrones, but don’t tell anyone.”
Harington’s inner circle included some of the actors playing his Night’s Watch brothers.
KIT HARINGTON: There are a lot of storylines that revolve around Jon. He’s a central figure. If you’re turning to other people whose storylines depend on yours and saying, “I’m not in it,” you’re telling them they’re not in it too, and I wasn’t comfortable with that. “Are you saying we’re not coming back to the Wall?” I had to be honest with some people who were friends and say, “It’s not what it seems, I can’t tell you what it is, but it’s not what it seems.” They weren’t prying, but at the same time, this is people’s jobs that they love.
When the season-five finale aired in June 2015, a new phase of the Jon Snow ruse began. Until then, producers and Harington only had to keep the character’s return a secret from Thrones’ cast and crew. Now, somehow, they had to keep it a secret from the world.
Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon Page 27