For the cast, the show ending meant the loss of many things: working with friends, being part of a global sensation, having a steady and rather lucrative job, and, perhaps most important, playing characters they loved in a world that was so immersive that it gained its own reality and permanence.
IWAN RHEON (Ramsay Bolton): The thing I’ll miss most is when you pick up a script and read it and there’s always one scene in every season where I go, “Thank you so much, this is such a beauty.”
LENA HEADEY (Cersei Lannister): Every time you did your last scene with a character you were like, “That’s it, it’s over.” There was a great sense of grief and we’re off to new pastures. There’s also a sense of loss, that nothing like this will ever happen again. I’ll probably never be on sets as magnificent as these again. There was an enormous amount of gratitude.
JACOB ANDERSON (Grey Worm): People think it must have been a very heavy and dark place to work. But I had so much fun. I have a very chaotic mind and can be very restless. I’m quite a panicky person. Sometimes for like five to ten minutes during a scene, I got to be this character who was so in control of themselves and still and calm. That’s been a really powerful thing for me, to be able to do that.
KRISTIAN NAIRN (Hodor): For me, it hasn’t really ended. It’s very hard talking about Game of Thrones in the past tense. I still feel like I’m still waiting for the next season.
NATALIE DORMER (Margaery Tyrell): I got the golden ticket. I watched the first season as a fan. I got on the train in the second season and was part of a beautiful, mad ride, and I had a beautiful arc for five years. Then I got out where I could capitalize on the profile it had given me, which I’m very grateful for. Then I had the beauty of watching the end of the series as a fan again. I’ll always have a little yellow rose after my heart.
JOHN BRADLEY (Samwell Tarly): It’s easier, in a way, for people who had careers before Game of Thrones. For people like Charles Dance and Diana Rigg, this is just part of a wider career. But for me and a lot of other cast members, this was the first time I’ll be a working actor and not be in Game of Thrones. I’ve never been kicked into the abyss. No matter what job I did in the first half of the year that I might not enjoy as much, at least I had Game of Thrones to go back to in the summer and be around that family again and be around all those familiar faces. Game of Thrones always felt like coming home.
MAISIE WILLIAMS (Arya Stark): There are loads of stories I want to tell. There are loads of stories I want to play. I worry nobody will want me to do it. It will be nice to get back to normality. I also have an app I’m launching that I hope will help people. I’ve got a production company and there are a couple movies we want to make. I want to direct. There are not many opportunities where you get to do everything with one character and [on Thrones] there was a whole spectrum I got to do. So whatever happens after, I made this count.
RORY MCCANN (Sandor “the Hound” Clegane): I’m a sailor and spent all my years trying to do up boats. I’m thinking of sailing off into the sunset. That’s my dream. I have an old wooden ketch. Two masts, all wood, forty-five years old. Gorgeous thing with a peat fire inside it. I’d like to go away for a couple years.
When asked where McCann plans to sail away to, the actor replied with a Hound-like bark: “That’s my fucking business.”
KIT HARINGTON (Jon Snow): The goal of acting is to gain some recognition and fame. That’s not what I’m looking for anymore. This gave me the freedom to try things I want to do. Produce a bit, maybe try directing and try roles that not many people will see but will give me some satisfaction. Maybe do something completely different. I nicked beers from David and Dan’s fridge and I left them a note saying, “I owe you two beers and one career.” And that’s how I feel.
LIAM CUNNINGHAM (Davos Seaworth): Because of the timeless nature of it and being a fantasy and because of how good it is, I think Thrones will hold up the next fifty years and people will keep discovering it. It’s a great honor to be a part of that. Every day it was a pleasure to go to work. I will miss the elegance of it and working with people who are at the absolute top of their game.
GWENDOLINE CHRISTIE (Brienne of Tarth): I loved that Brienne, in her last scene, is at work. I love that her last line is, “I think ships take precedence over brothels. . . .” That’s what I want to be remembered for, and that’s how I want Brienne to be remembered: as a feminist icon and a practical woman.
PETER DINKLAGE (Tyrion Lannister): I will miss this so much, but you gotta turn the next chapter of your life. I’m closing in on fifty. I started on this show in my thirties. Like so many people on the show, I’ve married and had children during the course of this. You got to make room for the new thing. It’s heartbreaking. It’s the greatest role I’ve ever had, working with the greatest people who are crazy fucking lovely.
EMILIA CLARKE (Daenerys Targaryen): There was a lot of laughter, there were a lot of parties, there was a lot of drinking. Every time we all hung out, I always felt like we’d just come back from working in the mine. Everything about doing the show was so not glamorous, so no one ever stood on ceremony with anyone. It was the most honest working environment I will probably ever experience.
NATHALIE EMMANUEL (Missandei): I can never really quite articulate what the show and the people who were involved meant to me. People often give the cast the praise for it all, but it’s important to talk about the hundreds, if not thousands, of people who have been responsible for that show’s creation who have put in so many hours. Every person who was there made it what it was. I hope they read this book and know I’m eternally grateful.
SOPHIE TURNER (Sansa Stark): I’m quite sad about it. This is everything I’d ever known. This has been my home. I spent more time there than I had at home. The saddest part is I don’t get to be Sansa, Maisie doesn’t get to be Arya. I won’t see Maisie in her costume anymore, I won’t be able to be in my costume and play this character. We don’t get to interact on that level, which is sad, because their relationship is a big part of who Maisie and I are.
CONLETH HILL (Varys): This show began ten years into a peace process in Northern Ireland after about thirty years of conflict. What I’m most proud of is the collection of all kinds of different people—young, old, gay, straight, black, white, male, female, Muslim, Jewish, Christian—who all worked together so well and so productively. And to the credit of my homeland, it showed you how beautiful it is there and how we can work together in peace. I couldn’t be prouder that it was made in large part in the place where I was from.
IAIN GLEN (Jorah Mormont): What we do as actors is ephemeral. We get lost in something and then go get lost in something else. But to live in that for a decade was the best thing ever to be involved in. Until my dying day it will be the most exceptional experience. To be in the biggest hit ever is the best feeling. What you can’t do is project ahead and say, “I want more than that,” because it ain’t going to happen. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing.
You have your final shot, your final red carpet—all of the “finals” of everything. There’s even a final “How do you feel about it ending?” It never hit me that much. It’s only looking back now, occasionally, that a shock will go through me: “I won’t be doing that again.” I can be doing anything, but it’s usually around work, when I just get a memory of the Thrones world. You had the most amazing support, the most brilliant crew, these great friendships, and a great deal of love for what we were doing, where anything was possible. Nothing will ever compare to it. Nothing will be like that, ever.
DAVID BENIOFF: After the final wrap party, the cast came back to the house that Dan and I had rented. We were there until sunup. There was a really steep hill in the back going down toward the water and all these young actors were drunkenly rolling down the hill. I just remember sitting there, watching them at sunrise, and thinking, “This was a good job.”
With no more words left to write, I asked that traditional final question for when something popular and
influential concludes: What is its legacy? It’s probably not possible to sum up the contribution of Game of Thrones to the world. The series had such an enormous and varied impact on so many millions. But striving for the impossible was always the point.
BRYAN COGMAN (co–executive producer): The legacy of the show? It’s too soon to tell. When you’re writing an addendum chapter to this oral history for the tenth-anniversary edition, then you can tell.
DAVID BENIOFF: It would be fun if it were like when you’re watching Fast Times at Ridgemont High, where people are still watching it twenty years from now and going, “Look, that’s a young Alfie Allen,” and “That’s a young Sophie Turner.” It would be really fun on a personal level to know we had a helping hand in launching those careers, and other actors who aren’t so young but we gave a boost.
DAN WEISS: I hope people keep watching the show. I hope kids who are the age of our kids now grow up and watch the show and take from it what they take from it. Nobody owns the future of what they make. Once you put something out there, it’s not yours anymore. It doesn’t belong to the people watching it now either. In twenty years there will be a whole new group of people and they’ll either watch it or they won’t. If they do, their reaction might be very different from your reaction. So I hope they watch it, and I hope they like it.
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN: We were the most popular show in the world, for a time. We set a record for most Emmys, and that’s a legacy. But records are made to be broken, and twelve years ago there was another show that was the most popular in the world and I don’t know what it was. I tell you what I hope for in terms of legacy: that we established adult fantasy as a viable genre on television. Now everybody wants “the next Game of Thrones.” Will anything be the next Game of Thrones? Even our prequels? I don’t know. If they all flop, then it will be another ten years before somebody tries a fantasy show again. That would be sad. I would like to see fantasy become a permanent genre, like lawyer shows or cop shows. There are good cop shows and shit cop shows, but there are always cop shows coming on. And it doesn’t matter if a cop show is good because there’s always another coming. That’s what I would like to see, every year a new fantasy show or two. That would be the legacy I would like to see for Game of Thrones.
NATHALIE EMMANUEL: It was a cultural phenomenon, it affected a whole generation. It was something dreams are made of. If I never work again, I’ll be like . . . “You know what? I did fucking Game of Thrones.”
CREDITS
Written in Ink and Blood
Like Game of Thrones itself, this book reflects more than a decade of passion and often seemed like an insurmountable task that was only possible to pull off with the help of many others.
I wish to thank my former and current Entertainment Weekly editors, particularly Henry Goldblatt (who approved the bulk of my set visits), Jess Cagle (who took a leap of faith in hiring me), and my current editor, JD Heyman (for his patient support of this project). At a time when so much entertainment reporting is reduced to quoting celebrity tweets, EW has been unmatched in its dedication to conducting on-the-ground reporting on film and TV sets worldwide. I would encourage readers who enjoyed this book to consider getting a subscription to EW, and regularly check out EW.com for ongoing coverage of Thrones and other popular franchises.
Also thanks to former HBO publicist Mara Mikialian, who accompanied me on each of my eight Thrones set visits and tirelessly stood by in the rain and cold while I waited for just one more interview. Thanks also to David Benioff and Dan Weiss, who let me come to their top secret sets and answered hundreds of probing questions. Thanks to George R. R. Martin for his wonderful chats, as well as for his immeasurable contribution to the world of fantasy. Thanks to “third head of the dragon” Bryan Cogman for his terrific insight into the production and creative process (and his own behind-the-scenes book, Inside HBO’s Game of Thrones: Seasons 1 & 2). Additional thanks to HBO licensing chief Jeff Peters for approving this book as an HBO project, supplying the photos, and making good on his company’s assurance that the manuscript would have creative independence. Also thanks to my agent Rick Richter for proposing the idea. A special thanks to my Dutton editor, Jill Schwartzman, who took a gamble on a first-time author. Also thanks to my former editor Kristen Baldwin (and Hula) for a helpful edit, and to my former THR boss Nellie Andreeva for letting me write that fateful Thrones pilot story. Gratitude as well to my supportive friends Dan Snierson, Stephanie Mark, Scott Barnett, Hannah Vachule, Caryn Lusinchi, and Keith Goode for putting up with so much of my book stress. Finally, thanks to the cast and crew of Thrones, who answered so many of my questions over the years, particularly Emilia Clarke, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Liam Cunningham, and Kit Harington, who were among the first of the show’s leads to grant interviews expressly for this project, lending it some helpful legitimacy.
Most quotes in this book are from my interviews conducted between June 2019 and April 2020. Others were culled from interviews conducted between 2011 and 2019 and were previously published by Entertainment Weekly, except those directly attributed to other outlets in the text. Some of the outside quotes were brought to my attention by Kim Renfro’s well-researched book The Unofficial Guide to Game of Thrones. Quotes were edited for length, grammar, clarity, occasional pronoun clarification (for example, “Brienne” instead of “she”), and tense consistency, and their order was arranged for narrative coherence so long as it did not alter the speaker’s intended meaning.
At one point in this book, Clarke abruptly asked a rather existential question: “What is Daenerys?” One might ask the same of the show. What is Game of Thrones? There are many correct answers: an adaptation, a TV series, a fantasy story, a corporate enterprise, a snapshot of the entertainment world during seismic industry and cultural transitions.
I saw the show as a seemingly impossible dream made real. Game of Thrones was the filmic equivalent of Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile—proof that with enough determination and sacrifice, a creative human endeavor can portray even the most expansive outer reaches of our storytelling imagination and, in doing so, captivate the world.
—JAMES HIBBERD, AUSTIN, TEXAS, JULY 30, 2020
The Wall in the opening scene of the reshot pilot, “Winter Is Coming.”
The Starks find direwolf pups.
The Stark family greets King Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy) at Winterfell.
On the Castle Black set.
Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa) and Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) receive a fateful wedding gift.
Syrio Forel (Miltos Yerolemou) spars with Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) as her father, Ned Stark (Sean Bean), looks on.
Varys (Conleth Hill) and Littlefinger (Aidan Gillen) scheme at the Red Keep.
Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish in his brothel.
King Robert Baratheon and Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) at the jousting tournament in “The Wolf and the Lion.”
Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) demands trial by combat at the Eyrie.
Sellsword Bronn (Jerome Flynn) takes a stand.
A rare instance of Joffrey Baratheon (Jack Gleeson) showing sensitivity as his father, King Robert, lies mortally wounded in season one’s “You Win or You Die.”
The final moments of Ned Stark.
Arya looks on at her father’s execution at the Sept of Baelor.
Arya is taken away by Night’s Watch member Yoren (Francis Magee).
The Mother of Dragons is born.
A focused Emilia Clarke prepares to take the stage.
Melisandre (Carice van Houten) persuades Stannis Baratheon (Stephen Dillane).
A captive Jon Snow (Kit Harington) is led across a frozen lake by Ygritte (Rose Leslie) and other Wildlings in Iceland.
The reduced crew on location at a frozen lake in Iceland.
Showrunners Dan Weiss and David Benioff on the set in Iceland.
Kit Harington fighting Simon Armstrong (playing Qhorin Halfhand) in Iceland.
The Thrones crew huddles around a monitor in Iceland.
The ship set, which was redressed and used for all ships throughout the series.
“Moonlight” over the Battle of the Blackwater.
King’s Landing prepares for battle in “Blackwater.”
Ygritte and Jon Snow face off.
Ygritte falls at Castle Black in the arms of Jon Snow.
Bran’s direwolf, Summer, and Jojen Reed (Thomas Brodie-Sangster).
Theon Greyjoy’s torment begins.
Robb Stark (Richard Madden) and Talisa Stark (Oona Chaplin) in love.
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