Who's ready for a little less ice and a lot more fire?
House of the Dragon, the Game of Thrones prequel series about the Targaryens' much-alluded-to reign that will hopefully answer all of our questions about our favorite platinum-blonde family, is finally here.
Premiering Aug. 21 on HBO, the fantasy drama created by author George R. R. Martin and Ryan J. Condal promises to fill in the gaps of the history that was frequently invoked over the course of GOT's eight-season run (which ended with a bit of a thud in 2019) as Daenerys Targaryan discovered her power, harnessed it...and ultimately became mad with it.
Which probably had something to do with crazy being in the bloodline, so we are prepared (as much as anyone can be prepared when the man who devised the Red Wedding is steering the ship) for some wild twists in House of the Dragon.
But even though Khaleesi kinda disappointed in the end—or maybe you cheered the immolation of King's Landing, we're not judging—Game of Thrones was really one hell of a series, one that commanded your attention lest you miss a plot point that would prove essential much later. One of the premium shows that, just when you thought they wouldn't go there, went there, GOT set a new bar for the much-maligned genre known as fantasy and then proceeded to clear it over and over again.
So even though House of the Dragon is taking us back to a year centuries before the Lannisters, Starks and Baratheons were battling for the Iron Throne, there's no time like the present to indulge in some Game of Thrones lore. Move your water bottle off to the side and enjoy these secrets about the making of what is still—for now, at least—HBO's most-watched show ever:
George R.R. Martin, whose A Song of Ice and Fire novel series kicked off in 1996 with the publication of Game of Thrones, has credited the popularity of the 2001-2003 Lord of the Rings films with growing viewers' appetite for—and critical appreciation of—well-made onscreen fantasy.
At the same time, he didn't like any of the pitches he was hearing about condensing his five epic tales—GOT alone clocked in at 694 pages—into a watchable movie. Or even several movies. But as fate would have it, in the mid-'00s his agent sent the books to writer David Benioff—and as soon as Ned Stark lost his head, he had writing partner Dan Weiss start reading as well, to make sure he wasn't geeking out over nothing.
The pals decided quickly that only a TV series could do A Song of Ice and Fire justice.
Their meeting with Martin was a success, but as all three remembered for James Hibberd's 2020 oral history Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon, the author wanted to make sure Benioff and Weiss were really invested—so he asked, based on the clues woven throughout the books so far, whom they though Jon Snow's mother was.
"We were weirdly prepared for that question," Benioff recalled. And with that, they were in business. Or, at least, ready to start trying to do business with a network.
Benioff and Weiss felt early on that HBO, with its penchant for big spending, would be the best place for what they envisioned.
"There were a fair number of reasons not to do it," GOT executive producer Carolyn Strauss, who was president of programming at HBO when she heard the pitch, remembered to Hibberd. "There are many ways a fantasy series can go south."
Still, it was a yes—albeit a yes that was only the beginning of the first leg of GOT's journey to the small screen. It took months to secure the rights to the books, and then Strauss left HBO in 2008, meaning Benioff and Weiss had to re-convince the new programming president, Michael Lombardo.
The pair admittedly fudged the truth when they reiterated that the show, while expensive, would be more about the characters than anything else, knowing full well how grand the action got down the road.
"I'm not sure I ever really believed that," Lombardo told Hibberd of Benioff and Weiss describing the plot as "contained." "We knew it was a gamble."
The pilot got the greenlight in November 2008.
Game of Thrones' premiere episode on April 17, 2011, was visually stunning and wildly intriguing—and it wasn't the original $10 million pilot that was shot to suck you into the world of Westeros.
Actor-filmmaker Tom McCarthy, who had previously directed Dinklage in The Station Agent and went on to make the 2016 Best Picture Oscar winner Spotlight, was instrumental in the GOT casting process and helmed that first first episode.
Which, ironically, felt a little too contained. "There were concerns about whether we were getting enough wide shots," Lombardo told Hibberd. Noting the lack of epic scope, "I remember the quote was, 'We could have shot this in Burbank.'"
On Craig Mazin and John August's podcast Scriptnotes in 2016, Weiss called watching the reactions of the friends he gathered to screen the pilot "one of the most painful experiences of my life."
Benioff noted that no one seemed to have caught on that amorous twins Jaime and Cersei Lannister were brother and sister—"a major, major plot point that we had somehow failed to establish."
They credited then-HBO co-president Richard Plepler with being able to see past what was there toward what could be. He ordered 10 episodes, including a new pilot, which they started filming in July 2010.
After watching the version that made it to HBO—directed by Tim Van Patten, with McCarthy credited as a consulting producer—at the series' big premiere, Mazin remembered telling Weiss and Benioff afterward, "'That's the biggest rescue in Hollywood history.'"
The Chernobyl writer continued, "Because it wasn't just that they had saved something bad and turned it really good. You had saved a complete piece of shit and turned it into something brilliant. That never happens!"
McCarthy didn't go into detail, but noted to ABC News in 2016 that, when they went back to "re-shoot and re-work the pilot," he was already busy working on his 2011 film Win Win and wouldn't leave. "And," he said, "[GOT] was hugely successful without me."
Kit Harington beat out countless aspiring bastards for the role of Jon Snow, including eventual costars Alfie Allen (Theon Greyjoy), Joe Dempsie (Gendry) and Iwan Rheon (Ramsay Bolton).
"I think I speak on behalf of every British actor when I say, we all auditioned for it," Sam Claflin, who read for Jon and the despicable, short-lived Viserys Targaryan, told Cinema Blend in 2016. But he moved onto other things and ended up following the palace intrigue like a regular person. "I like getting into things like that [as a fan] and not being a part, because I always find it's very jarring if I was part of it."
Nicholas Hoult also went out for Jon Snow, telling Page Six in 2019 that he had a "ponytail and a very patchy fake tan" at the time because he was filming Clash of the Titans. So I remember being like, 'This is probably not what they're hoping for,' and it obviously wasn't."
"It could've been so different. I'd be dead now," Rheon, who joined GOT in season three, told Interview with a laugh in 2016, referring to Jon's indeterminate fate. "I think they made the right choice; it would've been a very different Jon Snow if I'd played him. I don't think there's much point in dwelling on these kind of things."
Besides, as Sansa eventually tells Ramsay, "You're going to die tomorrow, Lord Bolton. Sleep well."
Peter Dinklage initially had no interest in playing a dwarf in a fantasy tale, having avoided anything with a whiff of stereotype throughout his career. But, respecting Benioff as a writer and being friends with his wife, Amanda Peet, Dinklage agreed to read the script for the GOT pilot.
Let's just say, it wasn't what he expected.
And so he agreed to play the series' gravitational center, Tyrion Lannister—though at first he insisted on not having a beard, in spite of the book's description of the imp who tries to care for little other than booze and women but can't help being much more complicated. (He eventually relented on the facial hair.)
Dinklage won four Emmys for supporting actor in a drama series and was pretty much everyone's favorite character.
Just as importantly, Dinklage encouraged his pal Lena Headey to audition for the role of his sister, Cersei Lannister. (Which, fans speculate, may have originally been offered to Gillian Anderson, who passed...on something. "My 18-year-old cannot believe that I would turn down Game Of Thrones or Downton—things she loves to watch," the X-Files star once said.)
As for their brother, Jaime Lannister, Benioff and Weiss liked Danish actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau right away—even though exacting fans of the book complained about him not looking right. (Personal anecdote: Interviewing fans about Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban when it premiered in 2004, quite a few lamented that Gary Oldman was playing Sirius Black instead of their preferred choice: coincidentally, Sean Bean. Moral of the story: It's hard to please avid readers of fantasy.)
However, that doesn't mean the readers don't know what they're talking about—and sometimes, ask and ye shall receive.
Fans of the book manifested the not-yet-particularly-well-known Jason Momoa as Khal Drogo, and that's what they got.
Tamzin Merchant was first cast as Daenerys and was with the project through the original pilot—though apparently she already wasn't feeling it by then. And it came across on camera.
"Her scenes with Jason just didn't work," Lombardo explained to Hibberd. Co-executive producer Bryan Cogman thought Merchant "did a really good job," but, in hindsight, "it's obvious Emilia Clarke was born to play that part."
It at least sounds as though there were no hard feelings on Merchant's end.
"Shooting that pilot was a really great lesson," the Tudors star told Entertainment Weekly in 2021. "It was an affirmation about listening to my instincts and following them, because I tried to back out of that situation and, during the contract process, I did back out. I was talked back into it by some persuasive people. Then I found myself naked and afraid in Morocco and riding a horse that was clearly much more excited to be there than I was."
And, Merchant continued, "I think it's a testament to Emilia Clarke for making that role iconic—she was obviously excited to tell that story, and she was epic and excellent. But for me, it wasn't in my heart to tell it."
At least two roles went to the only conceivable actors for the part because Benioff and Weiss are stand-up dudes. They had already found their Prince Joffrey when they went to Dublin to audition other young actors for different roles, and Jack Gleeson was there to read for the evil young royal. "We didn't want to cancel on him," Benioff told Hibberd.
And John Bradley's train from Manchester to London was canceled on the day of his audition for Samwell Tarly, so he ended up going another route and was certainly going to be late. Once again, the creators—who thought they had their Sam already, too—were too kind to cancel on someone who'd come all that way.
"He ran from the station," Weiss recalled. "Then he found out the elevator was out." Three flights of stairs later, that first guy was out of luck. "Within 30 seconds we realized [Bradley] had cost this other guy his job, because he was completely perfect."
Maisie Williams was 12 when she shot a quick audition video of herself during lunch period at school and sent it along to the GOT casting crew, her second time trying out for anything. She ended up beating out dozens of other girls for the pivotal role of Arya Stark.
Thirteen-year-old Sophie Turner tried out for fun with encouragement from her drama teacher and didn't even tell her parents till it was down to her and six others to play Sansa Stark. (It ultimately came down to her and Izzy Meikle-Small, who reflected to The Telegraph in 2013, "I was a bit sad, because the show's massive, but I'm not that unhappy, because they all show a lot of flesh, don't they? I don't think my parents would be happy.")
Turner and Williams met at one of their auditions and became fast, enduring friends. While shooting season seven, the actresses got matching "07.08.09" tattoos to commemorate the day they were cast. (And that's Aug. 7, 2009, how they do dates on that side of the pond.)
Isaac Hempstead Wright was 10 when he unwittingly scored the role of the winner of the Game of Thrones, Bran Stark, blissfully going off to summer camp and being pleasantly surprised when he came home and found out he'd been chosen.
Pride and Prejudice star Jennifer Ehle played matriarch Catelyn Stark in the original pilot. Ehle told The Daily Beast that, having just given birth to her first child, "It was too soon for me to be working, emotionally and bonding-wise, but I needed to do it and I was also passionate about the books." But she was one and done, stepping aside and opening the door for the Catelyn you know, Michelle Fairley.
And not wanting to miss their chance like those Harry Potter fools, Benioff and Weiss envisioned Lord of the Rings star Sean Bean as Ned Stark early on.
"We had a really good chat, and I was very thrilled to be asked to play the role," the English actor told EW in 2019. "I think it was only myself and Peter cast at the time. I was very thrilled by the whole idea. I didn't actually know at that time how enormous and massive this series would become. I was just getting my head around the part, as we all were."
So to speak.
Ned Stark may have lost his head, but Bean had to go back to work.
"The death, that was wonderful because it was so unexpected," Bean, who until that gut-punch of a twist (for non-readers of the books) in the penultimate episode of season one had truly been the show's North star, told EW. "I thought it was amazing how they shot it. But I died, and then I had to do some scenes from earlier in the episode, so it wasn't the end for me. We were in Malta; it was very hot. It was very colorful. Everyone was there, and with things like that there's a sort of gallows humor to it.
"It's awful what's happening, and you start giggling and laughing. When the head fell off, there were mistakes. It didn't quite work out sometimes. It was quite comic. So it breaks the ice a bit."
Speaking of twists that faithful readers knew was coming but which destroyed anyway, season three's Red Wedding in the episode "The Rains of Castamere" was always coming.
In fact, Martin told Hibberd for EW in 2019 that Robb Stark was basically death No. 2 in his book (give or take a lot of other relatively minor deaths) after Ned. Writing A Storm of Swords, though, he left that scene for last (not for the end of the book, that is, but rather he put it off till later). "It was like murdering two of your children," he said.
Richard Madden, who was reading a book a season, said he spoiled his own fate by Googling, though before that "a thousand people" made many allusions to the fact that something terrible awaited Robb.
The show managed to make the scene sicker than the book by including Robb's bride, Talisa Stark, in the massacre, but Oona Chaplin—knowing Talisa was being killed off—was ultimately glad her character was a part of it. "I was praying for a cool death and when I read [the script] I was like, 'F--k, everyone dies!'" she told EW. "But even when it was on the page it was nothing compared to what it was like on the day."
"It was horrible," Madden acknowledged in a farewell-to-GOT call with reporters after the episode aired in 2013. "It was a really difficult day for everyone. There was lots of tears from many people, including myself."
It was a hard pass for Lily Allen when she was offered the part of Yara, sister of Theon Greyjoy, who was played by her real-life brother, Alfie Allen.
Not that the singer wasn't flattered, but "I felt uncomfortable because I would have had to go on a horse and he would have touched me up and shit," she told Vulture in 2014, referring to the scene when Theon, having not seen Yara since they were children, makes a pass at her because he doesn't realize who she is. "Once they told me what was entailed, I said no thanks."
And Gemma Whelan was, of course, pitch-perfect as Yara—once she learned what the first rule of Game of Thrones was.
"The first lesson I learnt was when I first got the job. No one told me to keep quiet about it," she told The Times in 2017. "I just thought it was normal to pop it in my Spotlight entry, so I wrote on my CV, 'This summer, Gemma will be playing Yara Greyjoy in Game of Thrones.' And the Internet went nuts. One of the lovely, lovely producers on Thrones called me into his office and said, 'This is very serious. We almost can't employ you because of this.'"
Jon Snow getting stabbed in the back by his Night's Watch brothers (who technically stabbed him in the front, many times) at the end of season five was the cruelest of cliffhangers. Because even though he died before our eyes, surely that couldn't have been the end for him (even though GOT wasn't exactly averse to killing off main characters...).
"No one was allowed to say 'Jon Snow' on set, ever, everyone had to refer to me as 'LC' [for Lord Commander]," Harington told EW of the subterfuge that went into keeping his character's resurrection in season six a secret. The actor's name didn't even appear on call sheets or any other place on set where just anybody might see it.
"I'm glad that people were upset that he died," Harington said. "I think my biggest fear was that people were not going to care, or it was just going to be, fine, Jon Snow's dead, but it seemed like people did have a—similar to the Red Wedding episode—a kind of grief about it, which meant that something I'm doing, or that the show is doing for Jon is right."
As fans of both the books and the show were well aware, after season five Benioff and Weiss had to venture into the icy blue yonder alone once they ran out of source material, Martin really taking his time with book six, The Winds of Winter—which is still in the works, FYI. (Though he did advise the showrunners on certain plot points, such as the heartbreaking past/present Hodor reveal.)
So in theory, GOT could have gone on and on instead of ending after eight seasons. But they didn't want to overstay their welcome.
"We want to leave while all the people watching this show are really into it," Weiss told Deadline in 2016 after the season six finale, also called "The Winds of Winter." "Get out at a high point and not have it be, 'Well, thank God that's over.'"
Added Benioff, "We're trying to tell one cohesive story with a beginning, middle and end. As Dan said, we've known the end for quite some time and we're hurtling towards it."
"The thing that has excited us from the beginning," he said, "back to the way we pitched it to HBO is, it's not supposed to be an ongoing show, where every season it's trying to figure out new story lines. We wanted it to be one giant story, without padding it out to add an extra 10 hours, or because people are still watching it. We wanted to something where, if people watched it end to end, it would make sense as one continuous story. We're definitely heading into the end game now."
Yes, it was as difficult to shoot Game of Thrones as it looked, from the costumes that took an hour to put on to gathering 500 extras (which were then made to look like 8,000 people) and wrangling dozens of horses for season six's "Battle of the Bastards."
Maybe by the end, when water bottles and Starbucks cups were showing up in scenes, the crew was just spent.
"The hardest part is the horses," Benioff noted to Deadline of the climactic showdown between Jon Snow and Ramsay Baratheon for control of Winterfell. "They make everything difficult and more complicated." He credited "horse mistress" Camilla Naprous for making it all possible.
Plus, he continued, "We have amazing stunt performers and in Miguel Sapochnik, a director who's so good at spending hours and hours and hours on every shot beforehand, so that he knows exactly what he wants when he gets to the battlefield on the day. We only shoot 10-hour days, so you have to pack a lot into those 10 hours. I've never seen a director so meticulous in his preparation as Miguel. It pays off when you see what he gets onscreen."
All told, over the course of 73 sprawling episodes, Game of Thrones cost an average of $100 million a season to make, with the cost per episode rising from $6 million in its premiere season to $15 million in its eighth and final season, Variety reported recently. But it won HBO 59 Emmys, broke incalculable ground for its genre and changed the lives of everyone who worked on the show.
And you can't really put a price tag on that.
House of the Dragon premieres Sunday, Aug. 21, on HBO and HBO Max.