Game of Thrones Creators: "We Can't Kill the Characters Fast Enough"
By MATT FOWLER
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IGN: You being a huge fan of the books, was there anything that you had to let go of, or write out of the season, that was painful?
Benioff: Well, some of the things we're kind of putting off and delaying instead of just letting them go. With the first season we were pretty much more or less able to adapt the novel Game of Thrones. But going forward we're thinking of the TV series as an adaptation of the entire saga. So it's now the Song of Ice and Fire that we're trying to adapt. And whether or not the second season actually mirrors the second book or not is less important to us than the whole series. When we're done, provided that HBO gives us permission to keep going with this year after year - say it takes us eight seasons to finish it all – then someone could take the DVDs for all eight seasons, some masochistic viewer, and just watch 80 straight hours and it would tell George's saga. As opposed to us being too worried about Season 2 just mimicking book two. At a certain point it just wouldn't make sense either since book four would mean that the fourth season wouldn't have any of the major characters since he split them in half. And so we could lose three or four of our main people. And so there are things that get bumped ahead from the third book into the second season, and likewise there are second book things that will be pushed into Season 3. Characters and storylines and whatnot.
IGN: Are you ready for more fan outrage like the kind that hit Youtube after the death of Ned Stark last year?
Benioff: I think that was actually one of our favorite moments last year was seeing that YouTube video. Because it's really hard to shock people these days. To really surprise them. After so many thousands of hours of movies and TV shows. And the idea that you can tell a story that still has that much of a visceral impact on people, and that so many people could be shocked, is great. Especially when it was a secret that millions of people who had read the book already knew about. We felt incredibly gratified though. And yeah, that one guy – Larry Williams – even though he was really angry at us in that moment might have come around to our side when we got him a poster signed by Sean Bean. I think he forgave us. So yes, we are hopeful that we can continue to stir up equally strong emotions.
IGN: One thing that fans feel very protective of, as far as Clash of Kings goes, is the Battle of Blackwater. Is that something that you were able to figure out, scale-wise, for the series?
Benioff: As far as the Battle of Blackwater goes, there was a danger at the top of the season, when we were doing the budget, that we thought that we just wouldn't be able to do it. And that we might just have to have Cersei and Sansa holding fast in that sort of panic room in the Red Keep getting reports from the outside, from the front. Which was more or less the way Shakespeare handled battle scenes when he knew he could do anything on stage. And that's kind of a time-tested way of doing things. Whether it was Rome, or even I, Claudius. But at a certain point, that felt like a cheat. Because it was one thing to do it in Season 1 when we did it with the battle, but this whole season is kind of building to the Battle of Blackwater Bay. And for us to not show any of that felt like it would have been cheating viewers. At the same point, we knew we didn't have the time or the money to do a prolonged Peter Jackson-style or Ridley Scott-style battle, so it came down to trying to figure out what we could do to have real dramatic impact. And visual impact knowing our limitations. And there was a lot of stuff we couldn't do.
There's rarely a time that I wish we were making these as features because we would lose so much and we wouldn't get to spend nearly as much time with the characters. And there would be so much pressure to make everything PG-13. Tyrion couldn't curse. And there wouldn't be any nudity and the violence would be too toned down. But this is one of the few moments when you do wish you had, like, a month to go out and shoot the full battle. And take that time to do it exactly the way George wrote it. And we couldn't. So it became about making strategic decisions about what we could show and what was going to be amazing. And luckily we have incredible VFX teams.
IGN: Who are some of your favorite new characters this year?
Benioff: It's tough to choose of course. I mean, I just love the women. I mean Carice van Houten who plays Melisandre is great. Rose Leslie playing Ygritte and she's wonderful. Oona Chaplin playing Jeyne. Natalie Dormer playing Margaery. So for me is sort of the season of the "new women characters." And they're all really strong in their own way. In very separate ways. I mean there's obviously a big gap between someone like Melisandre and Ygritte, even though they're both red-heads. They're phenomenally different. And each of them has made such an impact on their various storylines.
IGN: What have the child actors on the show been like this year? Have they been able to fully embrace the darker storylines?
Benioff: They're kind of amazing. I mean we just got so lucky because the three star kids are fantastic. And back at the beginning we knew we needed three great actors because the scenes do get so much more harrowing. So we needed something way more than just cute Hollywood kids. We needed to find real actors. Who were mature enough to handle the stuff that was waiting for them ahead down the line in the story. And they needed to be pros. For example, Sansa this year had a really brutal year in terms of what happens to her character and abuse and terrible stuff. And I think that because Sophie Turner is such a grounded person, and her mom Sally is so supportive, we were never nervous about it. I honestly thought that Sophie was more scared during a scene where she had to sing than a scene where she's getting her clothes torn and she's getting hurt. A scene that I would think would make a teenage girl scared, she was actually far more nervous about singing.
Source.
YOU GUYS. THEY ARE KEEPING THE SINGING. WHICH MEANS THAT WE GET THE SONG TO THE MOTHER. PRAYING TO THE OLD GODS AND THE NEW THAT WE GET THE SCENE OF ALL THE WOMEN PRAYING TOGETHER. CRYING RN AT THE PROSPECT. Oh, and this was a really great interview.
By MATT FOWLER
IGN: You being a huge fan of the books, was there anything that you had to let go of, or write out of the season, that was painful?
Benioff: Well, some of the things we're kind of putting off and delaying instead of just letting them go. With the first season we were pretty much more or less able to adapt the novel Game of Thrones. But going forward we're thinking of the TV series as an adaptation of the entire saga. So it's now the Song of Ice and Fire that we're trying to adapt. And whether or not the second season actually mirrors the second book or not is less important to us than the whole series. When we're done, provided that HBO gives us permission to keep going with this year after year - say it takes us eight seasons to finish it all – then someone could take the DVDs for all eight seasons, some masochistic viewer, and just watch 80 straight hours and it would tell George's saga. As opposed to us being too worried about Season 2 just mimicking book two. At a certain point it just wouldn't make sense either since book four would mean that the fourth season wouldn't have any of the major characters since he split them in half. And so we could lose three or four of our main people. And so there are things that get bumped ahead from the third book into the second season, and likewise there are second book things that will be pushed into Season 3. Characters and storylines and whatnot.
IGN: Are you ready for more fan outrage like the kind that hit Youtube after the death of Ned Stark last year?
Benioff: I think that was actually one of our favorite moments last year was seeing that YouTube video. Because it's really hard to shock people these days. To really surprise them. After so many thousands of hours of movies and TV shows. And the idea that you can tell a story that still has that much of a visceral impact on people, and that so many people could be shocked, is great. Especially when it was a secret that millions of people who had read the book already knew about. We felt incredibly gratified though. And yeah, that one guy – Larry Williams – even though he was really angry at us in that moment might have come around to our side when we got him a poster signed by Sean Bean. I think he forgave us. So yes, we are hopeful that we can continue to stir up equally strong emotions.
IGN: One thing that fans feel very protective of, as far as Clash of Kings goes, is the Battle of Blackwater. Is that something that you were able to figure out, scale-wise, for the series?
Benioff: As far as the Battle of Blackwater goes, there was a danger at the top of the season, when we were doing the budget, that we thought that we just wouldn't be able to do it. And that we might just have to have Cersei and Sansa holding fast in that sort of panic room in the Red Keep getting reports from the outside, from the front. Which was more or less the way Shakespeare handled battle scenes when he knew he could do anything on stage. And that's kind of a time-tested way of doing things. Whether it was Rome, or even I, Claudius. But at a certain point, that felt like a cheat. Because it was one thing to do it in Season 1 when we did it with the battle, but this whole season is kind of building to the Battle of Blackwater Bay. And for us to not show any of that felt like it would have been cheating viewers. At the same point, we knew we didn't have the time or the money to do a prolonged Peter Jackson-style or Ridley Scott-style battle, so it came down to trying to figure out what we could do to have real dramatic impact. And visual impact knowing our limitations. And there was a lot of stuff we couldn't do.
There's rarely a time that I wish we were making these as features because we would lose so much and we wouldn't get to spend nearly as much time with the characters. And there would be so much pressure to make everything PG-13. Tyrion couldn't curse. And there wouldn't be any nudity and the violence would be too toned down. But this is one of the few moments when you do wish you had, like, a month to go out and shoot the full battle. And take that time to do it exactly the way George wrote it. And we couldn't. So it became about making strategic decisions about what we could show and what was going to be amazing. And luckily we have incredible VFX teams.
IGN: Who are some of your favorite new characters this year?
Benioff: It's tough to choose of course. I mean, I just love the women. I mean Carice van Houten who plays Melisandre is great. Rose Leslie playing Ygritte and she's wonderful. Oona Chaplin playing Jeyne. Natalie Dormer playing Margaery. So for me is sort of the season of the "new women characters." And they're all really strong in their own way. In very separate ways. I mean there's obviously a big gap between someone like Melisandre and Ygritte, even though they're both red-heads. They're phenomenally different. And each of them has made such an impact on their various storylines.
IGN: What have the child actors on the show been like this year? Have they been able to fully embrace the darker storylines?
Benioff: They're kind of amazing. I mean we just got so lucky because the three star kids are fantastic. And back at the beginning we knew we needed three great actors because the scenes do get so much more harrowing. So we needed something way more than just cute Hollywood kids. We needed to find real actors. Who were mature enough to handle the stuff that was waiting for them ahead down the line in the story. And they needed to be pros. For example, Sansa this year had a really brutal year in terms of what happens to her character and abuse and terrible stuff. And I think that because Sophie Turner is such a grounded person, and her mom Sally is so supportive, we were never nervous about it. I honestly thought that Sophie was more scared during a scene where she had to sing than a scene where she's getting her clothes torn and she's getting hurt. A scene that I would think would make a teenage girl scared, she was actually far more nervous about singing.
Source.
YOU GUYS. THEY ARE KEEPING THE SINGING. WHICH MEANS THAT WE GET THE SONG TO THE MOTHER. PRAYING TO THE OLD GODS AND THE NEW THAT WE GET THE SCENE OF ALL THE WOMEN PRAYING TOGETHER. CRYING RN AT THE PROSPECT. Oh, and this was a really great interview.