Game of Thrones A-Z (11 page)

When a show interests a TV network, they usually commission a pilot episode just to see exactly what they will be getting. A script and excited producers can only go so far; until they see it with their own eyes, there will always be a touch of scepticism and hands wrapped around the budget. It’s rare that a series will be commissioned without a pilot first, and it’s unlikely that, even if it gets a series commission, the pilot that is shown to executives will be exactly the same as the one that makes it to the viewers.

Executives scrawl notes and demands, and changes often happen. A cast member can be replaced, whether it’s because it didn’t work out or, as is the usual case, their schedules make it impossible. It’s one thing to clear space in your diary for a month, but, as it can take up to a year for executives to finally agree on whether a show gets the go ahead, it’s unfair to point fingers at those who agree to another job while waiting for the series to finally get the green light. That is certainly what happened with 
Game of Thrones
.

The original pilot was directed by 
The Wire
 actor Thomas McCarthy. He had impressed with his indie film 
Station Agent
, which starred Peter Dinklage. Weiss and Benioff were delighted to land him, but, when they came to reshoot the pilot, he ended up making indie wrestling film 
Win Win
, and was replaced by Tim Van Patten.

‘I did a lot of the casting,’ McCarthy said to
AVCLUB.com
. ‘I think we did some good work. But they’ve had to reshoot and rethink so much of it since I left, and I’ve had no involvement in that because of 
Win
 
Win
. I finished that right before Thanksgiving and went into 
Win Win
 over the holiday, so I literally had a week or two of downtime. I turned in an early cut, and they had to recast, and I think they rethought. You know, they’re taking on this huge book, and they rethought how to get into it and how to set it up. They had to change some locations, and they did quite a bit of work on it since I left. I’d like to think I had some impact on it, but I don’t think much of that is mine anymore.’

Benioff spoke about McCarthy to 
bullz-eye.com
 while making the original pilot, ‘Well, Tom’s really smart, for one thing, so talking to him about the project got us excited about his vision for it, and I loved his movies. I think we both loved his movies and the way he works with actors.

And, you know, the feeling was the other way to go was potentially to get someone who was known for doing the big effects things and the lavish spectacles, and, for us, what made this story we weren’t going to try to compete with Peter Jackson and 
Lord of the Rings
. There’s no way we could. What we could do with this story, though, is spend a lot of time with these characters – they’re wonderful characters – and really get to know them and get incredibly in-depth and incredibly intimate.’

Benioff and Weiss both felt this was something Tom did better than most directors. ‘And, you know, the last couple of movies, I think of Peter Dinklage’s character, for instance, in
The Station Agent
, and just how much I loved that character,’ Benioff continued. ‘I wanted to spend more time with that character and was upset when the movie ended, and I felt like Tom could really bring that kind of direction to the actors and begin this journey for them.

‘It was really educational for us to watch how he handled the casting process and how he, as an actor, had been through this drill I can only imagine dozens, probably hundreds of times, just gave him an empathy for the person sitting there. Because casting can be, I would imagine, a very uncomfortable experience for an actor, but he really made people feel at home, and when they walked into that room, it didn’t matter if they were great or they were not so great, nobody left there feeling bad. That’s a very cool thing.’

Some of his scenes remained in the shown pilot, and, because he helped with the casting, McCarthy received a Consulting Producer credit.

McCarthy said, ‘The guy [Van Patten] who did the second episode, when they were doing all the reshoots, he took on the first. I couldn’t do it. And I just didn’t feel connected to it. It wasn’t a big decision. It felt right. It felt like more of it was his than mine in terms of what you see on the screen now, and I think if you would talk to them, they would say I was helpful in a lot of the process, but it certainly doesn’t feel like mine. It’s really not a director’s medium. I think there are some really good TV directors, but that is a writers’ medium and a studio’s medium. There was a good learning curve on that, but I don’t think it’s anything I’ll rush back to.’

As well as different actresses playing Catelyn Stark and Daenerys Targaryen in the original pilot, the brief role of Waymar Royce was originally played by 
Harry Potter
 star Jamie Campbell Bower. Roger Allam played Illyrio Mopatis in the series, but Ian McNeice played him in the pilot, with Dermot Keaney replacing Richard Ridings for the part of Gared.

Roy Dotrice was cast as Grand Maester Pycelle, but his scene was cut from the pilot. However, producers still wanted him, but he fell ill and was replaced by 
Star Wars: Episode V
 and 
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
 actor Julian Glover. Doune Castle in Scotland was used to stand in for Winterfell, with the Daenerys and Dothraki scenes being shot in Morocco rather than Malta as in the series. Author George R. R. Martin filmed a cameo at Daenerys’ wedding, but the scene was excised from the shoot. ‘It was, sad to say, left on the cutting-room floor,’ said Martin. ‘It was during Daenerys’ wedding and I was a Pentoshi nobleman in the background, wearing a gigantic hat.’

Martin has previously mooted the idea of appearing in the show, telling 
Empire
, ‘I also had investigated the idea of being a head on a spike, and David and Dan were going to put my severed head on a spike at one point, but then they got the quote for what that would cost. Those severed heads are expensive and our budget is tight! So unless I provide my own I don’t get to be a severed head! But one of my fans who does that sort of thing has offered me the chance to make one next time I go out to LA. How could I resist? I could have my own severed head and carry it around in a bowling bag.’

Other scenes that made into the final aired series include King Robert and Eddard Stark’s conversation in the Winterfell crypts, and Ned and his brother’s conversation about the dead ranger.

HBO programming chief Michael Lombardo was thrilled when he saw early footage, calling it ‘fantastic’ and said executives were ‘on pins and needles’ while they waited for the rough cut. ‘The director got great performances,’ he said. ‘Unlike a lot of projects like this, everything was shot on location. It has such a rich texture that it looks more expensive than it actually was. The fantasy is so incidental; it has a very adult tone. You forget it’s fantasy while you’re watching it, and that’s what I love about it. I would be surprised if it doesn’t [get the green light]. It has everything going for it.’

Benioff told 
Collider
, ‘It was a good experience for us, in that we got to go back and do much of the pilot over again and learn from some of the mistakes we made the first time, some of which were scripted ones. You take certain things for granted, from reading the books. You think certain relationships are clear. We would show the original pilot to friends of ours, who are very intelligent friends that watch very carefully, and they would get to the end of the pilot and have no idea that Cersei Lannister and Jaime Lannister were brother and sister, which grew into the last scene of the show. So, we clarified some of the relationships. We also had shot the Dothraki wedding scenes in Morocco originally, which made a certain amount of sense, practically and budgetarily. We had great sets that we could use there, which had been built for 
Kingdom of Heaven
 for Ridley Scott. But Malta ultimately made a lot more sense for a location than Morocco had.

And there were a couple of recasting moves, which had been made, that necessitated reshooting all the scenes.’ McCarthy added to 
AVCLUB.com
, ‘I think the great shows, 
The Wire
, 
Sopranos
, 
Six Feet Under
 – I think there was a very clear understanding of whose show it was, and I think those guys who made those shows, there was a singular vision there. I think that show can get there; I just think it was hard for me, not being so involved. I finished it and walked away, and I’ve never done that with anything. I’m a perfectionist and I like to be involved. I liked a lot of the people I worked with; I worked with some really talented people on that project. But it felt a little more like a job.’

P

PETER DINKLAGE

Peter Dinklage is the only male actor to get his own chapter in this book, but, as anyone who has seen his performance as the roguish Tyrion will know, if anyone deserves more focus it’s Dinklage.

When news of the show was announced, one of the first questions asked was who would play Tyrion the Imp. It was actually a question that the show’s bosses and Martin had pondered very briefly – with Dinklage their only choice to play the much-loved dwarf.

‘When I read George’s books,’ Benioff said, ‘I decided Tyrion Lannister was one of the great characters in literature.

Not just fantasy literature – literature. A brilliant caustic, horny, drunken, self-flagellating mess of a man. And there was only one choice to play him.’

There were certainly similarities. Obviously, they were roughly the same size (although Martin noted that Dinklage was almost too tall and handsome for the character as described in his books), but they also had the same attitude.

Dinklage said to 
Rolling Stone
, ‘When you’re reminded so much of who you are by people – not a fame thing, but with my size, constantly, growing up – you either curl up in a corner in the dark or you wear it proudly, like armour or something. You can turn it on its head and use it before anybody else gets a chance.’

He was born with achondroplasia in 1969 in New Jersey to his music-teacher mother and his insurance-salesman father. Being a dwarf wasn’t something that was registered in Dinklage’s household (‘I think I would have remembered it, or it would have stood out’), with nothing moved from the high shelves to aid him. If he wanted it, he would have to find a way to reach it.

Inspired by The Who albums, he would put on puppet rock shows with his older brother for elderly people in his parents’ basement. He would also perform to the song ‘Send in the Clowns’: ‘I would dress in some sort of wig, but not dressed as a clown – I knew from an early age not to humiliate myself,’ he revealed to 
Rolling Stone
 magazine. ‘I was on a tricycle, and we played the entire song, and my whole part of the revue was to ride the tricycle and fall over, while these old people were sitting there. It’s really a sad visual now that I think about it, a six-year-old little guy who keeps falling over on a tricycle. But if you ask any actor, they have those stories, they turn to that stuff. I don’t know if Robert De Niro was doing puppet shows in his basement, but he was doing something.’

Growing up, he began to be more withdrawn, dressing in black and smoking cigarettes all day. ‘When I was younger, definitely, I let it get to me. As an adolescent, I was bitter and angry, and I definitely put up these walls. But the older you get, you realise you just have to have a sense of humour. You just know that it’s not your problem. It’s theirs.’

However, drama became more of an outlet, and he has to thank a teacher for this, for making him showcase his talents in an Irish play called 
Sharon’s Grave
. ‘It was the first time I played a part written for somebody my size,’ Dinklage explained. ‘He was just this wretched guy who was carried around on the back of his older, dim-witted brother, sort of an 
Of Mice and Men
 relationship. It was like, “Oh, wow there are things out there, it’s not just Gilbert and Sullivan, there are these parts out there.” It was only later that I ran away from roles that were specific to people my size.’

George R. R. Martin. The man behind the complex fantasy novels and TV series
Game of Thrones
.