HBOCode names, secret sets, disappearing scripts—Game of Thrones went to great lengths to keep secrets for its upcoming final season.
There were rumors about multiple endings being shot to throw off spoiler spies, but Maisie Williams shot down that idea when she appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live. "Well, I heard this, and I immediately thought, ‘I don't think we've got the budget to shoot lots of different endings,'" Williams said.
However, Sophie Turner revealed what did actually happen to keep the secrets of season eight. Turner confirmed the reports of self-destructing scripts (they wouldn't blow up, this isn't a movie), but "it's all true," she said.
"I mean, we wouldn't get anything physical. We would have it on an app. We would get sent sides for the scene [we were shooting] the next day. So we would have to learn it all the day before," Turner told Digital Spy. "And once you've read it, it disappears 24 hours later, and you can never access it again. It's tighter than the White House security!"
Turner's comments support what Nikolaj Coster-Waldau previously said about the scripts. "They're very, very strict. It's reached a crazy level this year," he told Esquire. "We actually get the scripts and we shoot the scene—we only have it digitally, and when you've done the scene it just vanishes. It's like Mission: Impossible—'This will self-destruct.'"
Game of Thrones would also cover the cameras on visitors' phones to avoid having photos taken and the cast had code names, Turner said so that nobody would know who was really on set that day. The show itself also had a code name for filming: Face of Angels.
"It's a random one!" she said.
Don't read anything into Face of Angels…or should you?
As for the ending, Coster-Waldau said he was satisfied. "I also know that we end the right way and the show ends on its own terms," he said. "When I read the scripts for the last season I was like, 'Wow, they really pulled it off'."
The cast has been paying tribute to the series as production winds down for good. Williams recently marked the end of filming with a bloody Instagram post, Turner got a tattoo to commemorate her time on the series and Emilia Clarke penned an emotional note to Belfast, the country they filmed in. See all of that right here.
Game of Thrones returns to HBO in 2019.