Game of Thrones A-Z (16 page)

Questions about the nudity are aimed at Benioff a lot, and he joked one time, ‘We will address this issue with a 20-minute brothel scene involving a dozen whores, Mord the Jailer, a jackass, and a large honeycomb.’ Weiss added, ‘There will always be those who want to see less sex, and those who want to see more sex, and those who want to see sex in big tubs of pudding. You just can’t please everyone. This year, we’re going to focus on the pudding people.

‘There’s not a checklist. You just have to do what feels right to you and not worry too much about it. [You don’t] start counting how many breasts per episode or how many full-frontal male nudity shots. There are always going to be people who think there’s too much. There will be some who want to see less. One of the benefits of HBO is that we can give a more well-rounded representation of life. And that sex is a part of it and darkness is a part of it, and so is the humour.’

According to Benioff and Weiss, the character of Ros – played by Esmé Bianco – was originally created as a plot device, allowing them to bolt the many scenes that happen in whorehouses and to prostitutes to one central character.

‘There’s definitely something to be said for the fact that she’s a common thread between all of these people, which I don’t think any of them realise,’ said Bianco. ‘People are unguarded around her, which will prove to be interesting.

There’s a person beyond the plot device. She’s a cocky girl, and there’s no denying that. She knows how far she can push it, but she knows at what point society is not going to ever accept her. The problems that she faces are very representative of the problems that women face today, but you hope that not too many women are forced to beat their co-workers with a large stag-headed sceptre.’

Bianco is a famed burlesque dancer, but insists she doesn’t want to be just known as ‘that naked girl’.

‘Objectivity is almost a choice you make. As a burlesque performer, I didn’t choose to be objectified. I’m entertaining people, and people can choose to see me as an object because I’m naked, but I don’t choose to see myself like that. I hold the power.’

Bianco added, ‘When there’s a naked woman on the screen, people start making judgements about it. I’ve been over here [in Los Angeles] since 
Game of Thrones
 came out, so I don’t know how different the reaction has been in Europe, where people are a lot more tolerant of nudity on screen. People [here] see a pair of breasts, and they forget that there’s a story going on.’

Not all actresses were eager to disrobe, with one actress turning down the part because of the nudity. Irish model/actress Lisa Nolan was cast for the second season, but she said, ‘The scene looked like it was going to basically be soft porn. I thought it wasn’t a sex scene and they said they would give me skin patches for my breasts. But when I got there they wanted me to be fully topless and in the scene I had to strip off. So I pulled out at the last minute.’

Emilia Clarke herself said about taking on the part of Daenerys, ‘When I first auditioned, they said there might be a bit of nudity (a smidgen). It was only on a family holiday prior to filming that I got the full final draft of the script through, and had a jaw-to-the-floor shock and petrifying moment. I’d read the books and I loved Daenerys, and I knew what I needed to do to get the integrity of the role across and what the audience needed to see to glean the empathy that was required to do Dany proud. I just as an actor threw myself into it in that sense. HBO were there to catch me, they are incredible! Really tasteful – you put your trust in them and it pays off. Also, Jason Momoa is an all-time legend and was just certainly so easy.’

Peter Dinklage has no problem with filming the sex scenes. ‘Those scenes are fun,’ he said. ‘We get so much flak for it, but what’s wrong? I just find it to be so sad, people get in such an uproar about breasts, but not chopping people’s heads off.’

Author Martin himself said, ‘I get letters about that fairly regularly. It’s a uniquely American prudishness. You can write the most detailed, vivid description of an axe entering the skull, and nobody will say a word in protest. But if you write a similarly detailed description of a penis entering a vagina, you get letters from people saying they’ll never read you again. What the hell? Penises entering vaginas bring a lot more joy into the world than axes entering skulls.’

Y

YGRITTE

A flame-haired feisty woman, whose hair is described by her wildings family as having been ‘kissed by fire’, Ygritte is part of a scouting party that is ambushed by a team of Night’s Watch members, which includes Jon Snow.

Lord Eddard’s bastard child is told to kill her, but, as they leave him to do the job, she seizes on his reluctance and tries to escape.

SPOILER:
Snow manages to capture her, but he is lost from his group in the vast wilderness. She is eventually found by her wilding companions, and is happy when Jon says that he wants to turn his back on the Night’s Watch to join the wildings. Unbeknown to them, Snow is undercover in a bid to infiltrate them. They eventually begin sleeping together, which goes against his Night’s Watch vow. However, when he is told to kill a lone knight, he refuses, and Ygritte ends up slitting the knight’s throat. Jon attempts to flee, and his lover shoots him in the leg with an arrow. He manages to get to Castle Black, where he successfully sees off the wildings. Ygritte is killed in the attack, dying in Jon’s arms.

Z

ZOMBIES

Well, not really zombies, but wights.

Wights are deceased bodies brought to life by the White Walkers. Unnervingly strong, they can survive the most brutal of attacks, and will still attack even if some of their limbs are missing. However, they are susceptible to fire.

As Kit Harington said, ‘The way I think of it, the Others, or the White Walkers, are this ancient race of people, and they use the zombies, or the wights, to be their army. But they’re not as bad-ass as the White Walkers are. I think that’s what’s so fascinating about this series, and especially the new season, because there’s something stirring in this world, and the fantasy elements are going to play a much bigger part.

We opened the first season with the White Walkers, but then they went away. And now we have the feeling that something is changing. We’ve got dragons, magicians, witches, zombies, loads of different elements, all coming in a subtle way; we’re not smacking you in the face.’

EPISODES GUIDE

Winter is Coming

Season one, episode one

Written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss

Directed by Tim Van Patten

HBO’s Michael Lombardo had typically raved about it, critics foamed at the mouth proclaiming it the must-see TV event of the year, while fans of the series eagerly awaited the show they thought they would never see – and on 17 April 2011, two weeks after HBO had already teased fans with a 15-minute preview running on websites, it finally arrived.

‘Winter is Coming’ begins with a bang. The men of the Night’s Watch ride out Beyond the Wall to capture tribes of wildings. They find the bodies of men, women and

children dismembered in the cold woods. One of the rangers flees and is captured outside the castle wall of Winterfell and is immediately deemed a deserter. The punishment is swift and severe, a beheading by Lord Eddard ‘Ned’ Stark.

In the original script, it is stated that King Robert and the King before him had hired someone specifically to do the beheading. However, Ned sees it differently, telling his young son Bran, ‘The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.’

Stark later finds out that his mentor, and the Hand of the King, has died. King Robert is soon to pay Stark a visit, which can mean only one thing: the King will ask his old friend to become his new Hand. Stark is reluctant to take the position, but, when he finds out that his mentor was murdered and that the King is in danger, he says yes to the offer. One of his young sons, however, accidentally walks in on the King’s wife and her twin brother having sex in an abandoned tower. He is caught by the brother, Jaime Lannister, and pushed to the ground.

TRIVIA

The wildings at the start were merely piled up on top of each other in the pilot, but in the reshoot it was decided to go for a more horrific image.

The dead stag seen near the start was a real dead one, and was decomposing so badly that a crew member vomited.

The direwolves were introduced early on in the episode, and obviously feature heavily in later episodes, but Martin wasn’t a fan of how they looked in the first series. While they used Northern Inuit dogs that were specifically bred to look like wolves, they did not carry the same intensity and, according to the author, ‘actually caused problems because the dogs were too nice’. Instead of baring their teeth and growling, they would instead wag their tails and lick people’s faces, dulling their impact to such an extent they were excised from certain scenes. Season two saw the introduction of real wolves, albeit in controlled conditions.

Other times they used CGI (computer-generated imagery) wolves, with Martin noting, ‘We’re getting something much closer to what I imagined in the books in terms of size and ferocity and the danger of the wolves.’

Alfie Allen’s hair is dark in the series, but they used his natural blond roots in the pilot, and there are glimpses of this different hairstyle from the pilot retained for this episode. ‘I had some bow-and-arrow experience from when I was a kid but other than that, nothing serious,’ he told 
GQ
 magazine. ‘Drawing it was tough, man. But it was cool. At one point I got four bulls-eyes in a row and was really proud of myself. I had to stop mid-scene.’

The courtyard is normally a gift shop in real life, while the Winterfell crypts are really a wine cellar.

Sophie Turner, who plays Sansa Stark, told 
winteriscoming.net
 about her first day of shooting, ‘My first day on set involved a lot of squeals of excitement on my part. It was a scene which involved many extras so I was very nervous with so many people around but everybody (the cast, crew and extras) were all so welcoming, friendly and helpful that I settled down and felt really at ease, even in front of the camera. That is when I realised that acting is what I really wanted to do. The most surprising thing was how considerate and lovely everyone was. I felt part of a massive family the moment that I stepped on set.’

Kit Harington, Richard Madden and Alfie Allen all held their breath to showcase their abs during the topless hair-cutting scene. Allen also didn’t eat for two days before the scene was originally due to be shot – so imagine his frustration when the scene had to be moved back!

Of working with Kit, Allen said, ‘Everyone just hung out with each other. One thing I would say is that I think, in any environment that you work in, there’s always going to be one or two people who you don’t like. But there just wasn’t that on 
Game of Thrones
. I know it sounds cheesy and clichéd but it was like a big family. Some of the show is funny but it’s not funny in a light way, it’s funny in a “I don’t know if I should be laughing at this but I’m going to anyway”. So to have a nice feeling on set and everyone just to be good with each other, it makes those dark moments easier because then it’s not just dark the whole time. Contrast of emotions is definitely something interesting that you like to do as an actor.’

Benioff and Weiss reluctantly added dialogue between Arya and Sansa, reinforcing the fact that Jaime and Cersei were siblings, after early screenings saw people being confused about their relationship.

When Mark Addy, playing King Robert Baratheon, met the Stark children, his remarks to them were made up by him on the spot. Addy told 
thevine.com
 about that scene, ‘I dismount and I walk up to Ned. There’s a little exchange that ends up with me laughing. Every time I laughed the horse would do a bit of a whinny – every single time – so you had a courtyard full of people on their knees rolling about.’

Tyrion’s introduction was a new scene added from the pilot, because he didn’t originally appear until later on when the feast was taking place.

The Dothraki wedding scene was disrupted after the set was partially washed away by a gale from the sea.

Iain Glen, who plays Ser Jorah Mormont, is dubbed ‘Jorah the Explorer’ by the crew because of all the exposition he has to speak.

The dragon eggs that Daenerys receives ended up as a wedding present to Martin and his wife from Benioff and Weiss.

When Bran is pushed off the top of the castle, it’s actually a stuntwoman who plummets to the ground.

POST-ANALYSIS

The reviews were almost universally positive, with 
IGN
stating, ‘As with any book adaptation, fans will worry and wonder as to what will be left out and what will be kept in, but the premiere episode not only effortlessly takes us along, faithfully, through the book, but it also manages to capture the majestically morbid spirit of Martin’s pages and turn them into thrilling television.’

Time Magazine
 said the pilot was ‘a very different one from many first episodes, even on HBO, in that it didn’t so much tell a single story or establish symmetries among the subplots. Rather, it just set a very large table: a big welcome-to-Westeros that said boldly that no one here is safe.’

While 
Den of Geek
 website raved, ‘On the basis of this first hour, the network has another hit on its hands that will not only please fans of Martin’s work, but draw in new viewers, thanks to its realistic world, complex characters and good old-fashioned sex and violence. Winter may be coming, but 
Game of Thrones
 is here to stay.’

The initial ratings on its American debut were solid if not spectacular. It earned 2.2 million viewers, but impressively scored almost half than on its first repeat. The third screening drew nearly another million. Compared to HBO’s 
Boardwalk Empire’
 s 4.8 million debut, it might have been seen as something of a disappointment.

However, HBO dismissed the comparisons as the two were different breeds in both genre and star quality, with the prohibition drama starring Hollywood names and backed by the giant of mobster cinema Martin Scorsese.