Six Things We Learned Behind The Scenes On ‘Game of Thrones’
The casting director would very much like you to stop sending her weird bribes.
Spoilers for Game of Thrones!
–
While the whole world debates the final two seasons of Game of Thrones and combs through Reddit for ways to spoil it for themselves, Junkee was invited to check out the real-life Westeros in Northern Ireland. We travelled over with a big group of international journos (or, more accurately, the world’s biggest GoT nerds) and attempted to track down Kit Harington in a Belfast hotel.
That didn’t pan out so well. But we did get to chat to some people who worked behind the scenes! Here are a few things we learned along the way:
–
‘Battle of the Bastards’ was even more ridiculous than you think
‘Battle of the Bastards’ was the ninth episode of the latest season of Game of Thrones, named after the now-iconic clash between the armies of Jon Snow and Ramsay Bolton. It’s been praised as a “masterpiece” for both its dramatic and technical prowess and helped a hell of a lot in earning the show a swag of awards at the 2016 Emmys. It also momentarily united the entire world to scream the same words at their TV.
ZIG ZAG, YOU BEAUTIFUL LITTLE IDIOT.
But it’s hard to entirely comprehend the scale of all this until you’ve heard from the people who made it happen. Carla Stronge (the show’s casting director) and Naomi Liston (the location manager) talk about the Battle of the Bastards — affectionately known to the crew as BOB — with the same pained but prideful expression some people have when they’re asked to recall childbirth.
“I definitely, without a doubt, think it’s one of the best episodes of television that’s every been on; if not one of the greatest battles that’s ever been filmed,” Stronge says. She was responsible for the preliminary organisation of all those involved on-screen. There were, she notes, a daily average of 400 cast a day, 200 crew, and 100 horses for 17 full days of filming. It was the longest shoot in the show’s history — and it didn’t come easy.
“BOB took a lot of thinking,” says Liston (who did most of the management work on-site). “It took place in an estate called Saintfield [and] I had to work out where we were going to get these 500-odd extras processed every morning. We really only have 3-4 hours to get all of these extras costumed, haired, make-uped. There were also 100 horses there so I had to work out where their stables go. I had to put a whole load of tank track on the field because obviously our horses come in lorries. The horses also had to do a lot of rehearsing in their own field. Once you gallop 100 horses through the field it’s going to turn up really quickly.”
Then, after weeks of superhuman organisation, she recalls a “quite scary moment” where it nearly all fell apart. “Before filming, Miguel [Sapochnik, one of the directors] started walking towards the back of the field (where the horse base was) and I felt like ‘oh my god, if he says he can see that field in the back of the shot, I cannot make this work, I have no idea how I’m going to make this work’.
“Thank god, because we need to do replication to make the army look bigger, he said we had to shoot up to the sky on that one.”
“Thank God,” she says again.
–
Actually, everything is more ridiculous than you think
Naomi Liston has worked as locations manager since the first season of the show and has an endless supply of stories like this.
“I also did the Daznak’s Pit in Osuna in Spain [Meereen’s fighting pit featured in season five] and that was 12 days of 600 extras,” she says. “We did one day that had 18 stunt burns. Riley, the stunt man, was telling me that’s the most anybody has done ever. That was massively challenging. We had an articulated techno arm that had a flamethrower on it and that was the dragon’s breath.”
To be clear, that “articulated techno arm” was literally lighting people on fire.
“There’s a lot of jumping through hoops we have to do to get access to those sites,” Liston continues. “We were down at the River Quoile down at Strangford [for Hoster Tully’s funeral scene in season three] — it’s absolutely beautiful but very protected. You’ve got wildlife protections orders, environmental protections orders… and we wanted to build a jetty.
“There hadn’t been a boat allowed on that part of the Quoile for 25 years and I said ‘I want to put a boat on here. Not only that, but the boat’s going to be on fire and special effects are going to have to put a rig in underwater because we need the boat to sail off in a particular direction when it goes on fire’. I had no less than five government departments who I was dealing with to get permission to do this.”
That boat is on screen for just seven seconds of the final cut.
–
It’s impossible to crack the secrets of season 7
Confidentiality and discretion is important for anyone working in film and TV, but at GoT it’s a core component of the job. Non-disclosure agreements are standard practice for anyone even tangentially involved on production, the major actors all have code names during filming, casting calls are obtusely worded to avoid speculation on the plot, and there are near constant paparazzi patrols of all filming bases, local hotels and airports.
OMG JOE DEMPSIE HAS BEEN SPOTTED IN BELFAST ALL MY GENDRY HOPES ARE ALIVE AGAIN https://t.co/oGrRxZZgmE pic.twitter.com/KK5fCsyL9P
— Jenna Guillaume (@JennaGuillaume) September 15, 2016
Moyra Lock, a marketing representative from Northern Ireland Screen, tells me she’s one of only a handful of people in the whole country to currently have information about the new season. She’s proud of it. She’s deserved it. But she still kicks herself for stumbling across spoilers in plot descriptions and even makes a point of deleting all GoT-related emails after reading in fear of a hack.
When asked how the cast cope with the burden of secrecy in their everyday lives (particularly on social media), Carla Stronge suggests HBO “are a bit like the CIA”. “They catch all of that stuff.”
A few days before my trip, Jason Mamoa ignited rumours that his character, the deceased Khal Drogo, may be making a return with an Instagram post saying he was “preparing for the north”. When Stronge was asked if he could be returning for the new season, she laughed.
“I couldn’t possibly comment.”
–
You’re never, ever going to get cast as an extra
Over the course of season six, GoT featured more than 2,500 extras. It’s the biggest number of any season to date and those crew put in a collective effort of 13,736 days work. In one way, it’s understandable to think the showrunners might like some help from you, a dedicated Australian superfan, in tackling that. But in another more correct way, that couldn’t be more untrue.
“We have big stars approaching us all the time and there are so many superfans of the show,” says Stronge, before deeply exhaling. “365 days of the year. I work on the show for six-nine months, but every day there are posts and things… You get very random things in the post. I’ve had people send Kit Kats and playing cards where every card has their face on it doing a different emotion — really classy. There are only so many cameos you can have.”
Whether you’re vying for a cameo or a gig as an extra, your location is ultimately one of the main things that stands between you and some airtime.
“With extras, we’re fairly adamant you have to have a base in Northern Ireland,” Stronge says, pointing out the extreme flexibility needed for the role. “In the past, I had someone fly themselves from Australia even though I’d told them repeatedly no. You can bet your bottom dollar that the day they’d come, something gets changed or cancelled, and of course it did.”
“With the actors, I am primarily there to get as many Irish and Northern Irish actors on that set,” she says. Though Dothraki and Unsullied characters, in particular, are deliberately cast from all around the world, Stronge points out the need to have natural local accents for small roles. “In season six, we auditioned for 75 parts and 45 of them were cast with Northern Irish or Irish actors.”
GoT has copped some criticism, over the past few months especially, for its lack of major roles for people of colour. Diversity does seem to be something Stronge keeps in mind when casting, but suggests there are outside factors which make it difficult.
“From my perspective, I always feel like I’ve won the lottery when I’ve come across an ethnically diverse actor in Ireland. That’s always hard to come by,” she says. Census figures show that the population of Ireland and Northern Ireland is around 94 and 98 percent white respectively.
–
Fans are more dedicated than ever
Over the past two years especially, Northern Ireland has built an entire tourism industry based around Game of Thrones. There are companies (official or otherwise) offering tours around old filming sites, local restaurants offer special dining experiences themed around the series, and there’s even an official pub crawl dedicated to season six (it features a series of doors sculpted to resemble scenes from the show).
Fans are making the trek, and they’re going all out once they get there. When I spent the day at Inch Abbey and surrounds (which were used as the setting of Winterfell and more in the show’s first season), I found the door of Walder Frey’s castle covered in GoT-themed scribbles and a tree that had been so smashed up it now had a small fence built around it.
Seriously, don’t touch the tree. It’s all messed up on the other side.
Turns out fans had been sneaking onto a farmer’s land and bashing the shit out of the same tree Robb Stark had hit when he learned of his dad’s death.
–
The Hound had a very hard job
Even if you don’t really like the show, there’s no denying its artistry. Even minor props are crafted with immense attention to detail and top-quality materials. All the armour worn — even by extras — is good enough to be worn in actual battle, the weapons are all legit (which seems a bit dangerous, but okay?), and they even occasionally even have real jewels in them.
This is a long way of telling you that I got to wear the Hound’s helmet and it weighs approximately 500kg. How Rory McCann ever wore this while riding a horse — let alone fighting clad in full armour — is genuinely beyond me. Here’s a cute photo of me before my neck snapped in two.
–
The writer was a guest of HBO. Read our full feature about Game of Thrones here.