Westeros comes to Ballroom 20, y'all!
The panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2011 started off with clips of the entire first season, introduced by GoT creator George R. R. Martin. Yeah I almost forgot how they simply nailed that last episode and that very last scene.
Martin was joined onstage by Lena Heady ("Cersi"), Nicola Costa-Waldan ("Jamie Lannister"), Kit Harrington ("Jon Snow"), Peter Dinklage ("Tyrion"), Jason Momoa ("Khal Drogo"), Emilia Clark ("Daenerys"), and show runners David Benihoff and D.B. Weiss.
Some highlights from the panel:
Martin says actor Sean Bean was robbed after not receiving an Emmy nomination, but that he's otherwise happy about the show's 13 other nominations.
In spite of the many attempts to get the project going as a film--one that was PG-13--it didn't get rolling until they approcached Martin about doing it as an HBO series.
Benihoff says he was first introduced to the book six years ago, but was daunted by the 5000 pages of the first four books. He described it as "crack on paper."
Clarke actually came directly out of drama school for this role. She said her treat to herself for wrapping season one was picking up the second novel.
I totally didn't know Lena Heady was all inked up! Lena describes her character as human and confused but says she gets knocks for injecting some of the former into her performance. Who are the dim folks out there complaining about that?
Martin asked Momoa who would win in a fight: Khal Drogo or Conan. There was funny little moment where Momoa bellowed into the mic. Funny to me, I like a good metal growl. Momoa's throat rip scene from late in the season came from a moment where the actor wanted his character to look like "the baddest man in the world." he wanted to do something without weapons in contrast to all of the sword work in Conan.
Momoa wouldn't do the little dance that earned him the role for the show. So...no snark intended: does Momoa just wear eyeliner all the time? What's the deal there?
Dinklage says that he and the rest of the cast were terrified about inhabiting these characters that readers around the world already know. He also said that his favorite scene was Tyrion's trial.
Harington is actually a stage actor in the current production of War Horse.
Weiss says that the forthcoming DVD and Blu-Ray release will have art by storyboard artist Will Simpson and be loaded with features, including the auditions of the cast. It'll be light on deleted scenes given that they used most of what they shot. If that last bit is true, I can imagine that's part of why HBO got behind the show in a big way--no waste, they show runners just got the thing made.
Weiss said that season three, if it happens, will lose some parity with the books given how large the third book is.
So far, not a whole lot of new insight about the show. The running theme is that everyone was excited to work on the show and occupy Martin's characters. I'm assuming in part this is because they're doing their best not to spoil season two for those who haven't read the novels. Also, because it's filming now.
Game of Thrones will return to HBO in the Spring of 2011.
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