Martin said the “hold the door” scene in a forthcoming book will play out a bit differently than in the show.
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN: I thought they executed it very well, but there are going to be differences in the book. They did it very physical—“hold the door” with Hodor’s strength. In the book, Hodor has stolen one of the old swords from the crypt. Bran has been warging into Hodor and practicing with his body, because Bran had been trained in swordplay. So telling Hodor to “hold the door” is more like “hold this pass”—defend it when enemies are coming—and Hodor is fighting and killing them. A little different, but same idea.
Thrones opted to have Hodor use his strength to block the door as he was agonizingly stabbed by the wights’ skeletal bones—which helped communicate the concept of “hold the door” in a literal way.
DAVE HILL (co-producer): For our purpose, holding the door is visually better, especially because we have so much fighting.
KRISTIAN NAIRN: I had tears in my eyes watching it. I don’t see myself on-screen; I see Hodor. I always talk about him in the third person. I just saw the character die, and it was very sad.
ISAAC HEMPSTEAD WRIGHT: Of course, Bran was just a warg the whole time. There were a couple times I literally fell asleep shooting it, just lying on a comfy sled.
KRISTIAN NAIRN: There were rumors of bringing Hodor back as a White Walker, and that would have been awesome, but I’m so happy with the storyline. I like [that] they left a bit of mystery there. We don’t know what happened to him.
DAN WEISS (showrunner): Hodor is the one word you can say to somebody and immediately evoke the show or the books. He’d just been quietly there in Bran’s storyline, being lovable while delivering the hell out of many, many hodors.
KRISTIAN NAIRN: There was a hodor I really like where Meera and I are talking about sausages. This guy loves his sausages, clearly, and bacon. His face lit up, and he started talking about food. I also enjoyed the hodor in season three with Osha. She’s complaining about having to build the camp, and he did this “Why you telling me?”–type hodor. That was a fun one. I can’t believe I can actually isolate two hodors from all those times.
Another character that, like Bran, spent a lengthy stretch of time off camera was the Hound. The weary Clegane brother was revealed to have survived his fight with Brienne and joined a pacifist religious community led by Brother Ray (Ian McShane), who lent the Hound insights such as: “Violence is a disease. You don’t cure a disease by spreading it to more people.”
The sequence was a rare stand-alone mini-story—“that Witness sub-movie,” as Mylod called it—within the larger Thrones narrative. It was also a glimpse of the type of storytelling the series might have regularly included if the show had continued long beyond season eight.
BRYAN COGMAN: It was my favorite week on Game of Thrones because it was a beautiful little three-act play shot out at Cairncastle. We’d done episodes mainly about one thing before, but they were action episodes. Here you have this New Age sept led by a man with a painful history of violence. He’s found his own flock trying to rebuild their lives. Brother Ray has this wonderful philosophy that I wish more characters had: “I don’t know if my god is the real god, but I just know we need to believe in something greater than ourselves.” He sees Sandor as a candidate. He recognizes in Sandor a bit of himself. The Hound, apart from being grateful, started to open up to the first and only friend he’s ever had.
The scenes have a light touch, a gentleness and humanity and humor that you don’t find on the show. It very much on purpose doesn’t really feel like Game of Thrones, tonally, until the end, when the raiders ride in and everyone gets slaughtered. In some ways, it sticks out. Some people had trouble with that episode because it doesn’t feel like an episode of Game of Thrones. I like it for that reason.
Fans wondered why the group’s leader had such an un-Westerosi name. When the episode was scripted, “Brother Ray” was secretly a nod to the writers’ first choice to play the role, actor Ray Winstone.
BRYAN COGMAN: Ray is a blend of a few characters in George’s book. We thought it would be interesting if it was a Hound-esque bruiser sort of guy, so Ray Winstone was the guy we were thinking about. I’m sure overtures were made to Ray Winstone. I was the one who thought of Ian McShane, and I’ll be proud of that to the day I die.
MARK MYLOD: Ian McShane was a force of nature. He’s gone down in Game of Thrones crew folklore as being the person who most improved the catering. His lunch was brought up to him and he disliked his burger so he kicked it and it went flying, and had a few choice words of what he thought of the burger. The burger whacked into Rory [McCann], who was enjoying his burger and had no complaints. But a few days later we had a new caterer who was brilliant. So thanks, Ian.
Even more famously, McShane was accused by fans of spoiling the Hound’s return to the show during an interview. The actor then dismissed Thrones altogether as a show about “tits and dragons.”
MARK MYLOD: I was surprised by that. I think he was being defensive because he was accused of giving away spoilers. A typical Ian-style defense is defense through attack. I never took it personally.
Down at King’s Landing, Cersei reclaimed control of the city in a most spectacular fashion in the sixth-season finale. The queen regent didn’t simply kill her Faith Militant enemies; she blew up their entire house of worship—along with the imprisoned Margaery and Loras Tyrell for good measure.
FINN JONES (Loras Tyrell): I got scripts for one through nine and read them all and thought, “Cool, cool, cool, this is good, I only got episode ten to come.” I felt really positive—“There’s only one more.” Then it was the evening before we got together for the table read and they were holding back episode ten. I was like, “Why didn’t I see episode ten yet? That’s really weird. It’s five P.M. and we’re doing it tomorrow, why haven’t I received it?” And just as I was saying that I got a call from David and Dan. As I’m picking up, I’m staying positive, thinking maybe they’re checking in to say hi. And they were just like . . . [dead silence]. And I was like, “Ah, God no! I was so close to season seven!”
NATALIE DORMER (Margaery Tyrell): I preempted the phone call because in true Natalie Dormer style I tried to fit a million and one projects in a single year. I requested David and Dan release me early the previous year so I could do something. They were like, “We weren’t going to tell you this for a few more months, but we’re not going to release you now, so you can’t do that job you really want to do and we’re really sorry about that. But on the bright side, we are going to release you proper in the not-so-distant future.”
DAN WEISS: Except we’d forgotten to tell Jonathan Pryce that he dies too. We were at the read-through and Bryan is reading the stage directions: “The High Sparrow is engulfed in green flames . . . ,” and Jonathan goes, “Nooooooo!” His reaction to being told he was going to die played out in front of sixty people.
The finale opened with a poetic sequence that showed all the King’s Landing players preparing for Cersei’s long-awaited trial at the Sept of Baelor—or, in Cersei’s case, preparing not to go to the trial and instead to go to war. Ramin Djawadi’s striking score for the sequence marked the first time the piano had ever been used in the show, a choice that cued the viewer that something unique was about to occur.
DAVE HILL: The idea of opening the episode with everyone getting ready for the trial was director Miguel Sapochnik’s idea, to spend a lot of time putting on the armor and the bracelets. The original temp score he put in was real close to what we ended up going with. David and Dan told Ramin, “Something like this temp score.”
At the sept, Loras submitted to further humiliation as the High Sparrow ordered the cult’s seven-pointed star carved into his forehead.
FINN JONES: The character was wild and desperate. He’s been in a cell a month or two months, no toilet, he’s having to shit, piss, eat, and drink in a little tiny space with no light, away from his f
amily, not knowing what’s going on. He’s scared and doubting himself. All he knew was his sister, who he’s relied on and has always been by his side. He was just begging her to help him. He wasn’t Ser Loras, the gleaming Knight of Flowers, who all the girls want to marry and all the dudes want to be, anymore.
Margaery began to insist that something was wrong. If Cersei wasn’t at the sept for her trial, there had to be a very good reason.
NATALIE DORMER: The reason it all goes tits-up is because Margaery wasn’t in control of the battle against Cersei. She had to hand the reins over to the High Sparrow, and Cersei outplayed him. Margaery is a victim of the High Sparrow’s incompetence. He underestimated Cersei, and that’s something Margaery Tyrell would never do.
Margaery became one of the show’s most tragic characters. She had everything required to win the game of thrones—a powerful family led by a cunning matriarch in Olenna Tyrell, multiple opportunities to become queen, a whip-smart mind, and an ability to read people and situations and act accordingly. Margaery was also a kind person, though not foolishly so. Her fatal flaw was something that was entirely out of her control: Margaery was spectacularly unlucky.
NATALIE DORMER: I am given a moment of some vindication at the very end, which was the perfect way for Margaery to leave the show. She’s given a platform to say that she was right, as she always is. I was very grateful for those last lines. She knows. She worked it out before anybody else has, as she always does. They gave me that beautiful exit where I’m like, “Oh, c’mon, guys, catch up,” and then shebang.
BRYAN COGMAN: Natalie originally had one more line of dialogue that was cut in the edit. She said to the high septon: “You fool, she beat you.” That was Natalie’s original last line, and then it all blew up. I suspect it was deemed unnecessary because it’s implied. Natalie is as good as anyone alive at conveying an unnecessary bit of dialogue.
In the catacombs below the sept, Lancel Lannister desperately tried to prevent the catastrophe. His legs disabled, Lancel crawled along the floor attempting to reach Cersei’s hidden wildfire stash before it ignited.
EUGENE MICHAEL SIMON (Lancel Lannister): That catacomb corridor was just as long as it looks, about thirty meters, no CGI. And bats live down there so it’s covered in batshit. I was crawling all that way, over and over, and I was determined not to move even a toe below the waist because [Lancel’s] spinal cord had been severed. By the end, I was so exhausted I was literally frothing at the mouth and the ground was covered in blood, shit, sweat, and a few tears.
They put petroleum on top of the “wildfire.” When the fire went off, it burned off my eyebrows and I could smell my own burnt hair. [Director Miguel Sapochnik] told me, “When the fire goes I want you to have this minuscule breath, almost childlike, like, Oh no.” Lancel is a pretty broken person at the end. But he really did not want to die and really did not want Cersei to win.
Cersei’s power play was the final straw for her sensitive son, Tommen. The young king was betrayed by his mother; lost his wife, Margaery; and was stripped of all authority. In a chilling scene, Tommen maneuvered about his chambers, numb and defeated. The king momentarily walked out of frame while the camera held on a window, waiting for him to return. When he did, he stepped onto the ledge without hesitation and fell face-forward in a suicidal plunge.
DAVE HILL: That was in the script. You don’t know why the shot is holding on the window even though the character is gone. Right on the other side of that window was a bunch of cardboard boxes. Dean, being a teenager and invincible, did take after take falling face-first. The hardest part was overcoming that natural human instinct to move your hands or turn your face.
Cersei also got her revenge on her Walk of Shame and prison tormenter, Septa Unella. But what viewers saw on-screen was not the show’s original plan.
LENA HEADEY (Cersei Lannister): It was so filthy. I don’t think people will be able to help going, “Yes!” It’s so depraved. It was meant to be worse, but they couldn’t do it. That was the tame version.
Originally, Hannah Waddingham said, Unella “was going to be raped by the Mountain.” Except nobody had told Waddingham her scene had changed until she was on the set and tied to a table. And the substituted “tame version” ended up being a rather torturous experience—quite literally.
HANNAH WADDINGHAM (Septa Unella): They instead decided to have her waterboarded. But I didn’t know that until I was lying on the torture table. All I knew was I had been given a wetsuit top in my trailer. So I put it on going, “I don’t know what this is for, but hey-ho.”
So David Benioff and Dan Weiss come up to me while I’m strapped to the table. They go, “Look, the script said, ‘Cersei empties the remainder of her glass of red wine into Unella’s face to wake her up.’ But fans are going to be expecting more brutality toward Unella, so it needs to be a full carafe of wine.”
We then spent the whole day with me being waterboarded. I’m not exaggerating when I say that—other than childbirth—it was the worst day of my life. The wine was going in my face for seven or eight hours while they were getting every pass under the sun. It was basically like drowning while the rest of your body is dry. One of the crew came up and was like, “Hannah, are you all right? Because we are actually waterboarding you.” And I’m all, “You don’t have to tell me that!”
LENA HEADEY: I loved shooting that. Hannah is a joy. It didn’t feel so great endlessly drowning her in wine, but we had a laugh.
HANNAH WADDINGHAM: Thank God I love David and Dan, and I’m so thankful for the opportunity, but it was hideous. It literally gave me claustrophobia. I had bruises all over and lost my voice from screaming.
Lena kept going, “I’m so sorry.” I was like, “Wow . . . I’ve been Throned.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Magnificent “Bastards”
Kit Harington took his shirt off.
The actor had been getting beat up on set all day as Jon Snow fighting the Bolton army and was muddied and battered. Finally, he was able to strip out of his grimy costume. Liam Cunningham, eyeing the chisel-chested Harington strolling across the production’s base camp, quipped, “He’s just doing that to annoy the rest of us!” Even out of his costume, there was plenty that still needed cleaning. That night Harington took a photo of his bathtub full of black water after his soak.
Sophie Turner had some Thrones-mandated grubbiness as well. Sansa Stark had been away from the comforts of a proper castle for so long that the actress was told not to wash her hair during certain season-six filming periods. “It is the most amazing feeling to have a shower after you go a week and you have [artificial] snow, and mud, and horse shit, and all these disgusting things in your hair,” Turner said.
Hygiene challenges were, of course, the easier parts of staging “The Battle of the Bastards,” or “BoB.” The clash among northern houses, led by Jon Snow against Ramsay Bolton, marked the biggest battle yet on Thrones. The episode is a favorite of critics and fans, and it went on to win six Emmy awards—tying for the most of any episode of television ever. “Possibly the best episode of television in history,” wrote The Independent’s Anthony Cody. “I was genuinely left awe-struck.” “BoB” also marked the drama’s first proper field battle, a style of warfare the show had long avoided due to its logistical difficulties and high cost.
MIGUEL SAPOCHNIK (director): After “Hardhome,” there were a lot of happy campers in the Game of Thrones offices. But there was also a sense that we somehow had to make “BoB” bigger and better. I personally felt the pressure and tried to quash it as quickly as possible by using as my mantra this response: “Let’s just make it the best we can.”
At first, the director watched battle footage from war movies, trying to figure out the best way to show the action.
MIGUEL SAPOCHNIK: I watched every field battle I could find, and footage of real ones too, looking for patterns—what works, what doesn’t, what takes you out of the moment, what k
eeps you locked in. The big reference was Akira Kurosawa’s Ran.
Interestingly, one of the things I noticed is that the staging of these battles through the years has changed dramatically. Back in the day, you’d see these huge aerial shots of horse charges, and there were two big differences. First, it was all real—no CGI or digital replication. And second, often when the horses would go down, you could tell they got really hurt. Nowadays you’d never get away with that, and nor would you want to.
Also, the more I watched these scenes, the more I felt like those aerial shots that are so synonymous with a charge scene kind of take you out of the moment. That is to say, you experience the moment as an objective observer in all its glory with no sense of danger from the inevitable impact of hundreds of huge stampeding animals. I was interested in what it must feel like to be on the ground when that shit happens. Absolute terror? A moment of clarity? What goes through your head when you are right in the thick of it? That said, at some point you need to put all the research down and tell a good story.
The most prized resource for a director filming an episode isn’t money, exactly, but the amount of filming time that money buys you. How many days of shooting will you have to get the coverage you need? Sapochnik read the original “BoB” outline and requested twenty-eight days for the battle sequence. The producers countered with twelve days. After a negotiation and a search for ways to make each shot more efficient, the production settled on twenty-five days.
That was a perhaps unprecedented commitment for a mere sequence within an episode of television, and yet, as usual, it wasn’t enough. A production team can create a schedule, but once you add animals, rain, and unexpected obstacles, the plan is quickly trampled. Each morning during filming, Sapochnik would walk to the top of a hill, survey his battlefield like a general, and “try and figure out whether the plan for the day was still solid.”
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