(THUD)
CREW MEMBER: All right, here we go. Gotta go.
They're lads and lassies. These all look great.
FREY: Proper wine! For proper heroes!
(ALL) Yeah!
FREY: Maybe I'm not the most pleasant man.
I'll admit it, but...
PODESWA:
and, you know, the question is always, "what do you start with?"
You either start with something small
to kind of ease your way in,
or you just start with something huge and get it over with,
then you can put that behind you.
In this case, we started with something really huge.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
Okay, everybody's dying out there, and... action.
(GAGGING)
FREY: That was your mistake.
Leave one wolf alive and the sheep are never safe.
(SPLUTTERING)
And I love that scene, because you come into this
and you're like, "Wait a second, Welder Frey's dead.
How is this possible? What's going on?"
I was thrilled that they'd made a full head prosthetic, uh,
which fitted my face, but I looked like David Bradley.
As an actor, to really reveal yourself and--
and take another face of your face, rather than just pretend,
that just made it a lot easier and a lot more fun, I guess.
PODESWA:
pulling on their own skin, really.
And then it's really done in cuts, where the--
the arm movement and where you place the camera.
Having Walder Frey do that and then having Arya repeat that
but from a different camera angle,
it looks like something's come off
and it's very effective.
What also makes it extremely effective is Maisie's performance,
because she just sells it so beautifully.
And I love the moment
when she turns to Walder's wife and says...
When people ask you what happened here...
tell them the North remembers.
I think it's a great opener for the season,
I think it's a great re-introduction to Arya,
where she's coming from and where she's heading.
MAISIE:
maybe there is the argument that you didn't have to kill
the whole Frey army, but... they weren't good news.
(LAUGHS) I don't think we'll miss them.
(CHAINS RATTLING)
I think, you know, starting with the Army of the Dead,
basically, why that's really important, is that
this is the common enemy, this is, like, the bottom line,
this is what everybody, in the end,
is gonna have to face.
It's the enemy that is beyond all enemies.
It's like the one thing that nobody really knows how to fight.
And so, the big question is,
are these people gonna get their act together?
Are they gonna figure out a way to fight the big enemy,
or are just gonna eat each other alive before that even happens?
So, the zombie giants this year, we've got two returning cast.
We've got, um, Ian Whyte and we've got Neil Fingleton,
who was with us on season four.
They're similar make-ups, but we have, kind of,
interchangeable little bits and pieces
and we did a slightly different paint scheme.
We had different costume, as well.
So, it's creating four different looks.
So, for the wights, this year, we decided
that we'd, up our game a little bit,
and we've re-sculpted an awful lot of the zombies,
uh, the make-ups.
They're still very mix-and-match and generic, 'cause we have
huge amount of stunt guys, but we just thought we would um,
change things up and improve some of the sculpts.
It's been a huge production line.
But it's something we were able to use a few existing molds
and then make a load new stuff, as well.
-WIGHT: Ooh! -(LAUGHING) Stop it.
ARYA: That's a pretty song. I've never heard it before.
It's a new one.
BENIOFF:
we knew he was a fan of the show
and we knew that Maisie was obsessed with him, um,
so, we always thought it'd be fun
to try to get him into a Maisie scene at some point.
I first got the scene and I saw that I was a Lannister soldier
and it was with Maisie, I just assumed we'd all get killed at the end.
CREW MEMBER: Action.
I don't want to steal your food.
SOLDIER: You're not stealin', we're offerin'.
Come on, it's gonna be a cold night.
Just a nice moment for her to really enjoy human company
without lies and trickery.
Well, I think the underlying theme is that, uh,
as in any war, um, the soldiers are just people
and we are young boys.
MAISIE: She really enjoys just hearing their stories
and finding a bit of normality, again.
SHEERAN:
that she can just, kind of chill, let her guard down,
have some food and crack some jokes.
So, why's a nice girl on her own headin' to King's Landing?
I'm going to kill the Queen.
(ALL LAUGHING)
(LAUGHS)
CREW MEMBER: And then to Highgarden.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
JAIME:
CERSEI:
Shooting that map room scene was a really big thing
and very extensive conversations
with Lena and Nikolaj about that.
You afraid of me?
Should I be?
There's a great amount of need for revenge for her.
CERSEI: Enemies to the south...
It's like she needs to put everything to sleep that causes her pain.
Enemies to the north...
Um, she's now just on this...
very driven, focused path to world domination.
And, of course, we're introducing this whole new set,
which is in this courtyard in the Red Keep...
where there's a hand-painted map.
Of course, you want to show this incredible thing
and also it has great metaphorical value,
there she is, walking all over it, the known world,
when thinking about, you know, ruling it.
So, you kind of want to do justice to that aspect of it, as well.
We thought that a-- a painted map on the ground,
-that seemed like a good idea--
CERSEI: Enemies everywhere, we're surrounded by traitors.
We knew that Jim Stanes, the graphic designer, would--
would create something amazing and he worked so hard on it.
We wanted to have some allusion to the opening title sequence.
And that just meant using some of the lettering,
some of the imagery and coming up with good colors.
And then, working it out, basically...
on a computer.
Then we had an image which we could print out.
Which was... the right size.
Had to do pseudo-medieval drawings of towns,
lots of lettering,
lots of conversation with the designer, especially.
Then, we had two guys come in, Dave Packard and Greg Winters,
who came in to actually paint...
the image that I designed, onto the floor.
The man who is, uh, firmly but politely dismissed
at the beginning of the scene by Jamie Lannister,
is, indeed, Jim Stanes,
who designed and created the map to begin with.
I don't think being down on his knees for quite so long was,
(CHUCKLES) was as much fun as he thought it would be,
but, uh... he did well.
CREW MEMBER: Cut. Very nice. Lovely. OK, moving on.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
(SAM GRUNTS)
(THUD)
There is some fun to be had, I think, in... seeing Sam
in this new environment, where, you know, he really came here
to the kind of tower of knowledge
to learn the secrets of the... known and unknown world.
-(METAL RATTLING)
a cog in this machine.
(WRETCHES)
Sam has quite a miserable time.
A man's dreams not matching up to the reality.
We don't lean on montage... that often in the show.
Partly because montages, to do them right,
take a lot of time and a lot of resources.
-Bernie came to us...
at one point and she said, "We've got three and half days
scheduled for this montage." (CHUCKLES)
Which is a long time to shoot what is maybe
a two-minute montage.
You know, in the end when we cut the scene together,
it was hilarious.
(GRUNTS)
-(CLANKING AND THUDDING) -(WRETCHES)
(COUGHS)
Going back to a place that created you...
and that was the beginning of you
and the end of your family, is kind of epic.
PODESWA:
And I think what was really lovely was that,
doing it for
you're doing a sequence like that,
you can really do it properly.
Like, you can really take your time with it,
you can really... give it its due as a real moment.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
Because there's no dialogue, it puts more weight on Emilia,
who's doing all of this with her face,
and her actions and her movement.
It puts a lot of weight on the art department
because the place itself is really the other main character.
RILEY:
that Daenarys feels very connected to,
where everything that she's heard about
is suddenly somehow in front of her.
(WAVES CRASHING)
That was exciting to do, and locations that we shot in
in Spain for it, were absolutely stunningly beautiful.
RILEY:
and power to it.
And when we arrived at Zumaia Beach,
the geological formations there are so unique and so special
and so interesting, that they have a weight to them
that, I think, none of us could ignore.
Actually, quite often,
we have to split location for the same scene.
The end result was we decided that we could do...
most of what we wanted to do in two locations,
split between Spain and Northern Ireland.
RILEY:
You then get up onto the platform,
go up a set of stairs,
and then we're on stage here in Belfast.
And then, once she goes through those doors here,
then you pick her up again in San Juan,
where she goes up the steps to the castle.
Those locations together,
informed for me, the whole design of Dragonstone.
And it all came from those really unique rock formations,
which are so so special and very unique,
just to that part of the world.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
DINKLAGE:
It's probably gonna be on film for about 30 seconds.
(CHUCKLING)
Two giant dragon heads were carved
by our sculpting team.
With the most beautiful big, massive doors
that were designed and built here.
The locations in Spain had that very strong rock formation.
That very strong striated look.
RILEY:
those beautiful, geological formations
in those side corridors.
We had to use the rocks from the location.
We sent out a team of plasterers to Spain.
They took impressions of the stone.
And from those, we created molds.
And we used those rocky shapes
to create the shapes of the corridors in the cave.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
ELTON:
that we were able to design.
And then that all culminated in the throne room,
where we had to create like a new architecture.
It's a lot of work, it was very, very labor intensive.
-I can do it without looking. -(DRILLING)
RILEY: Looks brilliant.
It's gonna be dramatic. (LAUGHS)
MAN: Yeah, it's really dramatic. Yeah, the angles are fantastic.
Dragonstone, of course, had been established in previous seasons,
before I came, so we had the Dragonstone map rooms.
So, it was already established as a cave-like space.
So, I wanted this set to sort of start in the cave
and grow out of it.
And then, we were able to bring in
those beautiful geological formations
in that throne, you know, the Dragonestone throne.
Which I think is, you know,
a really powerful sort of statement.
The only directions we gave her was that it should be
quite imposing and intimidating.
And that the throne would be carved out of the rock,
and that was it and like, that's all we gave her.
And then she went to town with that.
The first time we saw it all lit for a scene,
that was pretty dramatic.
As we were building it, people would walk through this set
and they would feel-- I'd feel very uncomfortable here.
It's not a room where I'd want to spend a lot of time.
So, it was a new approach to an audience chamber,
which was not welcoming people in.
It was basically making people feel uneasy and intimidated.
Yeah, I think it's maybe the best set we've ever built.
PODESWA:
EMILIA:
One of the most staggering sets that I've...
had the privilege of being in.
WEISS:
to the place where she's actually going to stand
and plan her conquests,
there's a different flavor to each one of those moments.
And you realize, this place where she was born,
there was a whole culture there. There's a whole world there.
And you get a real taste of it, and the uniqueness of it.
And the coming home is really very dramatic.
DAENERYS: Shall we begin?