Game of Thrones A-Z (17 page)

In fact, they warmed to the figures as the closest comparison they had was vampire noir
True Blood
, which only launched with 1.4 million viewers and went on to be a rousing success.

Coupled with successful UK debut ratings, a second season was commissioned shortly after its debut.

HBO’s Michael Lombardo said in a statement, ‘If you look at our history, it’s very rare for us not to go to a second season, particularly on a drama like this. We’re telling our subscribers, stick with this. In a few instances where we haven’t allowed a show to go to a second season, our consumers tell us, please do that sparingly. We’re going to do a show, you should get hooked on it. We believe in it, we’re excited by it. We see a large part of our audience is. We lean into it, and we want the audience to lean into it as well.’

The Kingsroad

Season one, episode two

Written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss

Directed by Tim Van Patten

Introducing a mass world that is coherent and throwing in a number of characters as quickly and seamlessly as possible is a problem many first episodes have to tackle. Unfortunately, given author Martin’s love for new plot lines and characters at every turn, Weiss and Benioff face this problem with nearly every episode.

However, ‘The Kingsroad’, which debuted on 25 April 2011, saw them face an even more difficult challenge. After introducing the Starks in Winterfell, and hinting at complexities in the family – Ned’s bastard son, Jon Snow, clearly not a favourite with Catelyn, the mother of Ned’s other children, and typical teenage girl Sansa at odds with the more tomboyish Arya – the family are then split up.

Eddard Stark and his daughters depart for King’s Landing, and head out on the Kingsroad. However, it turns nasty after Prince Joffrey – who is set to be betrothed to Sansa on the notion from King Robert that they should join their houses together – and Sansa take a walk on the riverbank. They find Arya toy fighting with the son of the party’s butcher, and Joffrey takes offence that his betrothed sister is being seemingly manhandled. He begins to cut the terrified boy’s face, but Arya defends him by hitting Joffrey with a stick. When Joffrey begins to attack her, her direwolf comes to the rescue and bites his hand.

After Ned is summoned to the see the king, the children each give conflicting events of the incident. However, despite Arya’s direwolf escaping, it is judged that Ned’s pet should be killed – to the horror of both Arya and Sansa, and to the delight of Cersei. Ned does the deed himself, and discovers that the butcher’s son has been murdered.

Meanwhile, Jon Snow has decided to join the Night’s Watch, and heads to the Wall alongside a curious Tyrion Lannister, who has tagged along, desperate to see the huge structure.

Also in this episode, the Dothraki clan departs Pentos and heads east, with Viserys Targaryen impatient at how long he’ll have to wait until Khal Drogo launches his attack on the Seven Kingdoms. Daenerys is struggling with life with her new husband, and seeks advice on how to please him.

In Winterfell, while Bran lies unconscious after being pushed by Jaime Lannister, Catelyn stops an attack on her son’s life, where a dagger is used to try and kill him. She then discovers a strand of blonde hair, similar to that of Cersei, at the tower where Bran fell.

TRIVIA

Talking about the differences in dress sense between the Starks and Lannisters, costume designer Michele Clapton told 
onscreenfashion.com
, ‘When looking at different groups, for example the Lannisters in the south and the Starks of the north, both are important families so we would look at what is available to them and what is important to their character. The Lannisters are very wealthy, competitive, they live in the capital and power is important. It’s warm on the coast, which means there is trade and they don’t have to worry about keeping warm. They have a large staff with silks and jewels readily available to them. As Cersei influences the court, and we notice her hatred for her husband, through season two we start to see her style begin to shift as her role changes.’

The Starks, however, live very differently, she continued.

‘They have less available to them and are in different circumstances as they live in cold, damp weather. Available to them is wool, leather, fur and some dyes. They have to think about warmth and wear the high padded embroidered collars as status rather than jewellery. The village people wear a simpler form of this look. They are not ostentatious and are a loving family who are not trying to prove anything. Only Sansa disagrees with this and we see this as she is influenced in her clothing, mainly by Cersei, and as the plot develops, she moves away from this.’

The scene where Cersei confronts Catelyn with a moving monologue about the death of her first son was Lena Headey’s audition piece. During the commentary on the episode she also states that she believes that a young Cersei was unlike Sansa.

Mark Addy and Sean Bean have a couple of great scenes in this episode. ‘We were in drama school at the same time, but we were in different years,’ Addy said. They had previously worked on the acclaimed 
Red Riding
 TV trilogy.

‘We get on very well,’ added Addy. According to Lena Headey, Sean Bean would constantly steal her sandwiches when they had lunch on set. Despite their on-screen distance, Addy was also close to Headey.

Jaime and Cersei’s sexual sibling relationship saw the term ‘Twincest’ coined by fans of the series – something that tickled both the actors.

During rehearsals of the scene where Joffrey attacks Arya, actor Jack Gleeson refused to call Arya’s character a ‘cunt’ – preferring instead to only use the vulgar term while shooting because he didn’t want to upset the young actress.

The wolves woke the actors up constantly with their howling. And in the scene where Ned Stark has to kill the animal, Sean Bean, who played the character, grew frustrated that a scene, which should have taken a minute to shoot, took hours to complete because the wolf kept moving.

Mark Addy was delighted with the first two shows and how it had already attracted a huge fan base, noting, ‘I think what HBO have done is ground this in reality. It is fantasy, it’s fantasy writing, but they’ve seen that in order to make it work, and to make it watchable by anybody, it needs to have a reality to it. It can’t be “and then he turned himself invisible”. There are elements of the supernatural here and maybe the odd bit of magic – but that’s kind of on the periphery. The main thrust of the thing feels so grounded in a reality.’

Dark haired Emilia Clarke spends almost two hours getting her hair transformed – with her hair being braided, a bald cap put on and then her wig styled.

Jack Gleeson told 
GQ
 about his audition for Joffrey, ‘I only had one audition, and the producers and writers were laughing at my performance because I was being so snotty and arrogant. They found it comical. I thought that was good. A big influence was Joaquin Phoenix in 
Gladiator
.

Sometimes when I’m sitting on my throne, I think of Phoenix sitting on his, with that smirk on his face. And I think my portrayal of Joffrey is very clichéd. It’s something that’s so easy to slip into because I’ve seen so many villainous characters on TV and onstage and in films. Joffrey is definitely informed by those performances.’

Sophie Turner admits she feels sorry for Gleeson, whose chilling portrayal belies his real life persona. ‘I kind of wish he would do more television interviews so that people can see what he’s really like,’ she told 
Vulture
, ‘because there is so much hate for Joffrey, I feel protective of Jack now. If I were him, I’d be petrified that people would come up and slap me on the street! I should be his bodyguard.’

She added, ‘He really is lovely. After our takes when he’s mean to me, he’ll come over and have a nice chat with me.

It’s kind of surreal. I had one particularly horrible moment with Joffrey, and then he came over afterwards and he said,

“How are you?”’

POST-ANALYSIS

Reviews weren’t as ecstatic as the debut episode, but still earned roughly the same ratings as the week before.

Shifting some of the characters out of their comfort zones meant it didn’t have the same dynamic thrust as other episodes, but many critics described it as solid.

New York Daily News
 stated, ‘It’s probably worth mentioning that sometimes 
Game of Thrones
 moves as slowly as a large army on foot and horseback inching its way across a bleak, endless, overcast Northern plain.

‘Oh wait, that’s exactly what it is, and what they’re doing. All that said, fans of the acclaimed 
Game of Thrones
 books, or even fans of fantasy realms in general, will find much to admire and enjoy here. It’s the sort of show, like 
Lost
, in which fans can immerse themselves as deeply as they wish and always find clues that will take them deeper.’

Lord Snow

Season one, episode three

Written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss

Directed by Brian Kirk

Two hours into season one and finally we see King’s Landing, with Eddard (Ned) and his daughters arriving after their long journey. We also have the first glimpse of Grand Maester Pycelle, Lord Petyr ‘Littlefinger’ Baelish, King Robert’s brother Lord Renly Baratheon, and head of the king’s intelligence network, Varys. It’s clear that Ned is a leader of men, steeped in nobility and honour. However, his role as Hand of the King is alien to him. Cunning and manipulation of egos are required here, not courage.

Catelyn also arrives at King’s Landing and is taken to one of the brothels that Littlefinger owns. With the help of Varys it’s discovered that the elaborate dagger used to try and kill Bran once belonged to Tyrion.

There is also a more in-depth look at the Wall, having briefly witnessed its wonder at the end of ‘The Kingsroad’ episode. We are introduced to Castle Black, which houses the members of the Night’s Watch – those that guard the Wall. Ser Alliser Thorne reluctantly praises Jon Snow’s combat skills, but his arrogant swagger and false sense of superiority rankles the other recruits. However, by the end of the episode he has channelled that arrogance into teaching them how to fight properly.

Across the Narrow Sea, Viserys begins to see that his plan has flaws and is furious at seeing Daenerys’ growing command and power over the Dothraki warriors. She later finds out that she is pregnant.

The episode ends with Arya receiving her first sword-fighting lesson from the flamboyant ‘dance instructor’ Syrio Forel – a light-hearted scene with a watching Ned bemused and proud of his feisty daughter, tempered by the dread that she could be needing to learn these skills not as hobby, but for survival sooner than everyone may think.

TRIVIA

This was the first episode of the series that wasn’t directed by Tim Van Patten. Brian Kirk would become a series regular, and his TV credits include 
The Riches
, 
Brotherhood
 and period drama 
The Tudors
. The Irish filmmaker also directed the movie 
My Boy Jack
(2007), which starred Daniel Radcliffe.

The opening of the episode sees Ned and his daughters arrive at King’s Landing in glorious weather – but it had been raining heavily the night before and the chairs they are sitting on are soaking wet.

Mark Addy said about King’s Landing to 
thevine.com
, ‘The scale of those sets! That’s the beauty of being able to use the Paint Hall in Belfast where they used to paint and assemble huge ships. You could build an entire town in that space and shoot there.’

The episode is dedicated to the memory of Margaret John, who played Old Nan in season one and died in February 2011 before it aired. Creators Weiss and Benioff issued a statement: ‘We were deeply saddened to hear about Margaret’s passing. She was a warm and wonderful person, and she was completely fantastic in her scenes with Isaac. We wish she could see them… but many people will, and they will love her. We will miss her terribly.’

The iPhone game 
Fruit Ninja
 was used by many of the cast and crew, quickly becoming a craze on set. Harry Lloyd, who plays Viserys, was blamed for introducing the catchy game on set, with many competing with each other to attain the highest score.

During commentary on of the episodes, the young female Stark members Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner’s nerves during read-through were soothed by actor Joseph Mawle. He told them that if acting were easy everyone would be doing it; so not to be worried if it gets so hard sometimes, adding that they wouldn’t have got the job if they weren’t good.

The cast constantly meet up and discuss in length their theories on who will eventually sit on the Iron Throne. ‘We do!’ Kit Harington confirmed to 
thevulture.com
. ‘We have fights in the bar about it. I don’t mean we’re beating each other up – it’s pretty amicable – but we do get pretty excited about the whole thing. Everybody has a character they think should be on the throne, and if you’re playing one of those characters, you secretly think it should be you.

You have to have a fierce loyalty to your character.’

Another theory that everyone’s constantly discussing is who is Jon Snow’s mother, with many casting doubt over Ned being his actual father. Kit Harington, who plays the role, told
Vulture
, ‘You just don’t know. George knows and Dave and Dan may have an idea, but they don’t tell me. I’m just as much in the dark as anyone. All I’ll say is that it’s interesting that a man with a moral compass like Ned Stark’s would have had affairs and dalliances that resulted in babies outside of his marriage. That’s my only question about it. As far as playing the part goes, Jon doesn’t know, so I don’t need to know. But that’s what’s so great about the books: So many people have so many theories! I mean, there are even theories about how Jaqen H’ghar in the second book is actually Arya’s fencing teacher, Syrio Forel, in the first book.’

The character of Arya’s instructor Syrio Forel is bald in the books, but producers decided not to shave actor Miltos Yerolemou’s hair as his bouncy afro looked good on screen.