Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon

by James Hibberd

  MICHAEL LOMBARDO (former HBO programming president): It’s not often creators come in and say, “I see the end.” It happened with David Chase on The Sopranos and Alan Ball on Six Feet Under. But this was on a bigger scale. I pushed back hard. The question was: Are we going to get over this? If you have showrunners who aren’t devoted to the journey, you’re going to feel it.

  DAVID BENIOFF: They knew we were looking at seven seasons for a while, then ultimately eight. HBO would have been happy for the show to keep going, or to have more episodes in the final season.

  DAN WEISS: “How about season ten?”

  MICHAEL LOMBARDO: They said, “We can do it with season six and then thirteen hours, then we think we’re done.” I’m all, “Thirteen hours? Where did you come up with that? Why couldn’t it be two seasons of ten?” We pushed, we cajoled. I tried to think of financial incentives. They were dug in. Honestly, it was hard after the books ended.

  DAN WEISS: When we gave them the final outline, that helped. They were able to see why taking this and stretching it into another ten episodes would ruin this and make something that’s ideally powerful and affecting feel drawn out.

  DAVID BENIOFF: It would have meant a lot more money for them. But once [CEO Richard Plepler] realized that we didn’t want to, he never pushed it. That was their philosophy the whole way through.

  Ultimately, HBO agreed that Game of Thrones would conclude with season eight. The show’s budget escalated to more than $15 million per episode for its final year (with five of the show’s leads earning more than $1 million per episode). Whether one views HBO’s decision as right or wrong, it’s highly unlikely any other major media company would have agreed to honor a writer’s request to end a phenomenon like Game of Thrones at the summit of its popularity (or, in this era of perpetual franchises, ever will again).

  DAN WEISS: To their credit, HBO [said], “We’ll give you the resources to make this what it needs to be, and if what it needs to be is summer-tentpole-size spectacle in places, then that’s what it will be.”

  LIAM CUNNINGHAM (Davos Seaworth): I hadn’t come across one soul who’s said they were happy it was coming to an end, but it had to.

  PETER DINKLAGE (Tyrion Lannister): A lot of shows stay on television too long. You could see it become a version of what it used to be and trying to recapture that. Like guys who go hang out at their former high schools too much. No decision should ever be made just because something is making a lot of money. David and Dan were smart enough, and HBO was smart enough, to not just go, “Well, everybody’s getting rich, let’s keep going.” No, no, no. That’s the worst thing you can do with something creative like this.

  MICHAEL LOMBARDO: It was painful. But one thing I learned about Dan and David was when they were coming from a position of principle. And part of trusting the creative is supporting them when they think a show should end. You don’t want to become a network producing episodes that the creators do not believe are integral to the storytelling. The idea of pushing them to a place where they’re not excited about the journey felt like the wrong way to end this. And the idea of continuing with other writers would never be considered. The hallmarks of this show are not just the action and CGI and the dragons. People respond to the storytelling. It’s so authentic, the characters are so well crafted. Once you lose that, you never get it back.

  So if we’re true to who we say we are, and we just keep going, then we’re doing what other networks have done. Nobody wanted that. However unhappy we were from a business standpoint, it was part of the journey of HBO. Did I hope they would change their mind? Sure. But they didn’t. Ultimately, I think we did the right thing and they did the right thing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Shipping Out

  Fewer episodes, but bigger and, hopefully, better—that was the strategy going into season seven. For the first time, Game of Thrones had to make only seven episodes instead of its usual ten. The reduced count came with behind-the-scenes benefits. Making fewer hours allowed Thrones to save money on some things (such as cast salaries, which are paid per episode) and spend more on others (such as visual effects). Season seven took roughly six months to film, the same as previous years, yet every element was labored on with more care. “What we normally spent in ten episodes we spent shooting seven,” as actor John Bradley put it.

  In addition, the show’s storyline brought more main characters together for longer stretches than ever before, and many actors were getting an unprecedented amount of screen time. “Before, if you put all your scenes together, it wouldn’t amount to very much,” Kit Harington said. “Now everybody left was left with more to do.” And given that making Thrones can be grueling, much of the cast found themselves working harder and longer. “You would think fewer episodes meant less work,” Nikolaj Coster-Waldau said, “but it was actually more intense than before.”

  DAVID BENIOFF (showrunner): We imagined the penultimate season would ramp into the final season with less action and more conversations, and we told [producer Bernadette Caulfield] that. Then we started planning and realized all the conflicts that were about to occur.

  DAN WEISS (showrunner): We handed Bernie the schedule, and she was like, “What the fuck, this isn’t going to be relaxing, this is going to kill everybody just like last year.”

  In the season premiere, Daenerys returned home to Westeros and climbed the ancient stone steps to take the throne of her ancestors at Dragonstone. There she met a delegation from Winterfell led by Jon Snow, as the King in the North attempted to convince the invading Dragon Queen to focus on the impending threat from the Army of the Dead. Finally, fire and ice had come together, and there was a tremendous amount of pressure to get their long-awaited meeting just right—particularly since the characters were destined to become lovers by the end of the season.

  EMILIA CLARKE (Daenerys Targaryen): Kit and I are very close. So acting opposite him in the beginning was very difficult because we just giggled our way through it. Our entire friendship had been not acting together. Both of us were going, “Ahhh, what are you doing on my set?!”

  KIT HARINGTON (Jon Snow): We were both kind of freaking out. With a movie you meet the other actor for the first time and you develop that chemistry over that time. But if you’ve known somebody for seven years and shared this incredible journey in your own lives together and watched their character on-screen for seven years, it’s a unique experience to be in, and you know the world is watching.

  DAVID BENIOFF: That scene wasn’t so much about instant chemistry, it’s about two monarchs coming together and the conflict between them. So it’s fun that there wasn’t chemistry. He’s annoying and she’s annoying, and somehow we’ve got to try and make peace.

  EMILIA CLARKE: It felt like the Battle of the Stares.

  KIT HARINGTON: You gotta take yourself out of the mind-set of the viewer. As far as Jon knows he’s just meeting this queen he’s heard about and trying to negotiate with her. He’s not meeting the Daenerys who the audience has been watching. That helps with the surprise of it. He walks into the room and doesn’t expect to see such a beautiful young woman of similar age to him. Any young man’s reaction is going to be, “Okay . . .” But he puts that aside because he has to.

  BRYAN COGMAN (co–executive producer): That was a seven-page dialogue scene where they just stay put and talk. I think people are so used to the excellence of our cast that they take that for granted. If you really pick apart the last two seasons, we were just as devoted to character and dialogue and human moments as we’d ever been.

  LIAM CUNNINGHAM (Davos Seaworth): There’s a streak in Benioff that’s willful. He likes to stir the shit. When we first meet Daenerys, Benioff and [director Mark Mylod] wanted Davos to have a crush on Missandei. And I fought them. “I’m not fucking doing it.” It’s the only thing I ever stood up to them on. The woman is a goddess, but with Davos’s history with Lyanna Mormont and Shireen, you can’t have him getting the hots for a young woman. I’m not 100 p
ercent sure David wasn’t just doing it to annoy me. “You’re not undoing my hard work engendering the sympathy of the audience to have him be a perv.”

  Over a succession of scenes at Dragonstone, Daenerys and Jon warmed to each other, while Clarke and Harington found it easier to perform together as well.

  EMILIA CLARKE: After we eased into it, Kit became the one person who I truly felt like I’d met my match with. As actors we spoke exactly the same language, as opposed to being like, How can I . . . ? Do you need me to . . . ? It became the easiest thing in the world. Working with Kit was like sliding on your favorite jacket.

  KIT HARINGTON: I would ask, “What’s the sexual tension in this scene?” and she would be like, “Stop talking about sexual tension!”

  EMILIA CLARKE: Then Jon decides to go off and fight the White Walkers, she’s like: “Why don’t I want you to go? Why don’t I want you to—don’t fall for him, don’t do it!” There was a battle going on in herself.

  As Daenerys and Jon Snow were trying to resist each other, Grey Worm and Missandei were giving in to their passions and had their first love scene.

  JACOB ANDERSON (Grey Worm): When I first auditioned, the role’s description said Grey Worm and Missandei were siblings. So [their romance] was definitely a surprise. I wondered if this was going to be another incestuous situation. I’m just glad they didn’t suddenly reveal they were related.

  NATHALIE EMMANUEL (Missandei): You’re like, “Okay, I’m getting naked.” And that was really strange for Jacob and me, because we’d danced around that scenario and we’d become good mates and now we got to be naked around each other. It was fine and done really respectfully. But whether you’ve done it many times or none at all, it’s a big deal. You feel like you’re giving something quite vulnerable, and yes, it’s hard. It helped to feel vulnerable and exposed in that scene, so it was good to use that energy, and it made it better.

  Before filming, Jacob Anderson asked Benioff and Weiss a question fans had long wondered: When Grey Worm was mutilated as part of his indoctrination into the Unsullied, which of his parts were removed, exactly?

  JACOB ANDERSON: I’m not sure they really knew. I’m pretty sure they hadn’t decided when I asked. It seemed they were having a bit of debate about it while they were answering the question. Not that it matters in the end.

  For whatever it’s worth, Anderson said their answer was: “He still has the pillar, not the stones.”

  For a show that had become somewhat notorious for its graphic content, the Missandei–and–Grey Worm coupling was the most widely praised sex scene in the show.

  NATHALIE EMMANUEL: It was kind of beautiful. These two have always hidden behind their duty. And there’s something unique about it because of Grey Worm’s situation. There’s a real sense of trust there. This is a really big deal for him, and Missandei knows that and doesn’t really care. She just loves him, and that intimacy they’ve shared comes to a head.

  JACOB ANDERSON: There was something really lovely and sweet about those two characters finally saying things to each other that they hadn’t been empowered to say before. But the main reason I’m proud of it is it felt like something I haven’t ever seen on TV. They were two people of color and one of them is a man in a show where people are always talking about their dicks. He has a physical disability and is accepted by this person that he loves. Whether intentional or not, the scene felt like it said something about masculinity and how bodies are seen.

  The scene was also a relief for Emmanuel and Anderson after spending so many filming days over the years standing rigidly at attention beside Daenerys while she held court.

  JACOB ANDERSON: The stuff in audience halls was always intense because I had to stand really, really still through sometimes ten pages of dialogue. A lot of the time I was just trying to not move and not lose my mind through fourteen hours of standing still. I’d get a bit delirious.

  As Missandei and Grey Worm consummated their relationship, Daenerys dispatched a fleet led by Theon, Yara, Ellaria, and the Sand Snakes to attack King’s Landing. Their ships were ambushed by Cersei’s forces during an intense sea battle the likes of which the show never could have pulled off during season two’s “Blackwater.” The frenzied sequence was also an opportunity to showcase the legendary Iron Islands pirate culture in action, as demonstrated by Euron Greyjoy (Pilou Asbæk).

  Asbæk first joined the Thrones team as Theon and Yara’s mad uncle in season six (oddly enough, the Danish actor had once worked as Coster-Waldau’s nanny). His character didn’t make much of an initial impression, and the producers cut some of Euron’s early material. For a while, it seemed that Euron—like the Sand Snakes—was destined to become another latecomer struggling to stand out amid a sprawling cast of fan favorites. As the production prepared for season seven, Asbæk pushed to give his character a makeover.

  PILOU ASBÆK (Euron Greyjoy): It’s weird to be a fan of something and then to be a part of it. I watched every second of the first five seasons. It’s like seeing a beautiful girl in class for five years and then one day you talk to her and end up kissing her and then all of a sudden you’re married and then you’re in an old relationship and you try to make it work as best you can.

  When I did season six, I had some great lines at the [Iron Islands’ leader-selecting ceremony, the kingsmoot] that they took away. He was talking to Yara and had twenty more lines where he was being ruthless. He was doing a comedy show for the Iron Islands. Dan and David said, “This is too much.”

  So I had an idea for season seven. I said, “What if we made him a bit more like a rock star, where you don’t know if he’s going to kill you or fuck you?” The costume designer was totally into that and made his outfit more rock star–ish.

  And that’s how Euron Greyjoy went from looking like just another grumpy, scraggly ironborn brute to a darkly charming leather-and-guyliner-wearing buccaneer.

  JEREMY PODESWA (director): Pilou had strong ideas about Euron being really dangerous but also having this kind of sexy-funny veneer. The script suggested that, but Pilou brought a lot more. It was a great example of how characters are never just one thing on the show.

  MARK MYLOD (director): I was worried about losing Ramsay because he was such a great baddie, just like people were worried about losing Joffrey in season four. With Euron, we got a new great baddie, but in a totally different way. It was “big,” but it worked. Pilou managed to make it real, which is difficult to do.

  PILOU ASBÆK: When I was talking to Cersei and Jaime in the throne room, I said, “So here I am with a thousand ships and two good hands.” Dan and David came up and said, “Take away ‘two good hands,’ it’s too much.” Because I had more confidence in season seven and felt like I belonged more, I went, “Guys, don’t take it. I know exactly how to be this. He’s gotta be charming, he’s gotta be arrogant, he’s gotta look Jaime right in the eye and say it with the biggest fucking smile—because he’s an idiot and a prick, and that’s what I like about the character.” They said, “Let’s try it out.” We did it, and then they said, “We’re so fucking happy you insisted on that.”

  DAN WEISS: We really haven’t had somebody in the show who has a kind of rock-star swagger, who just doesn’t give a shit. Everyone else in this world cares very deeply, whether they’re awful, wonderful, or, like most of them, somewhere in between. To have somebody traipse onto the stage with the swagger and attitude that Euron had was a lot of fun because it lets air into the room. There aren’t many people who could do that convincingly.

  Which brings us back to that sea battle. Just before Euron attacked Daenerys’s fleet, Theon watched as his sister, Yara, made out with Ellaria. It was a scene that underwent a couple of changes at the last minute.

  GEMMA WHELAN (Yara Greyjoy): Originally in that scene it was meant to be Ellaria kissing Alfie—a different dynamic. Then it was changed to Theon, once again, watching.

  INDIRA VARMA (Ellaria Sand): In the script, Yara invite
d Theon to join them, saying, “He might not have the tackle but I’m sure he can give pleasure.” They had to change it because there’s so many eunuchs in the series that they’ve already used that line on someone else! So there was a little rewrite.

  GEMMA WHELAN: Indira and I are quite fearless. It wasn’t directed that we would kiss. It was just meant to be a suggestion. But it just seemed like something we should do. So we led it, very much so, and then it became much more sexual than we anticipated. But it just felt right. Who wouldn’t want to kiss Indira? I mean, come on! Yara looked at Theon as if to say, Well, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. And then things go tits-up, to use an appropriate expression.

  The boat was violently jolted by Euron’s attack. But Whelan had previously injured her back during filming, so a stuntwoman briefly stepped in to play Yara for the impact shot.

  INDIRA VARMA: So I had to start kissing this poor stunt double, and she was so terrified! It was quite funny, bless her. I don’t think she’d ever been put in that situation before. She’s used to falling over and being attacked and all the rest of it, but to be kissed by an actress was a bit beyond her.

  Euron’s boat the Silence latched on to its target. Three of the ship’s defenders were whip-snapping Nymeria, spear-stabbing Obara, and dagger-throwing Tyene. It was the beginning of the Sand Snakes’ final appearances on the show, but Nymeria almost didn’t come back at all. After shooting Thrones season six, actress Jessica Henwick was snatched up by Marvel’s Iron Fist (an example of why Thrones producers were wary of adding more actors than they could afford to keep on a constant payroll). Marvel agreed to lend Henwick to Thrones for just two weeks of filming during her December holiday break. While her time on season seven was brief, and the sea battle was staged on the show’s mundane-looking parking lot ship set, Henwick said the experience was “the most insane set [she’d] ever been on.”