If you've followed reports from the production side of GoT, you've probably heard that the original pilot... wasn't great. In fact, aside from a few scenes it ended up being reshot completely.
Now journalist James Hibberd (who's done a lot of behind the scenes reporting on the show) has a book coming out. And the excerpt over at EW is all about the pilot nobody's seen. Thought there were quite a few interesting bits.
EW: Inside Game of Thrones' disastrous original pilot: 'Nobody knew what they were doing'
George R R Martin on Daenerys' and Khal Drogo's wedding night scene and differences to the book:
Also D&D originally wanted to cut Rickon
The pilot didn't look right:
Other problems:
Why HBO still greenlit the show:
On why Catelyn and Daenerys were recast
Now journalist James Hibberd (who's done a lot of behind the scenes reporting on the show) has a book coming out. And the excerpt over at EW is all about the pilot nobody's seen. Thought there were quite a few interesting bits.
Below is the first excerpt from the upcoming oral history Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon: Game of Thrones and the Untold Story of the Epic Series. The book (coming Oct. 6 and available for preorder now) represents the first-ever behind-the-scenes account of making Thrones from start to finish. It's an uncensored look inside the 15-year battle to pull off the show – from its earliest meetings to the airing of its final season – and is largely told from the perspective of the show's creators, cast, crew and executives.
The following picks up midway through the original pilot's production in 2009. First-time showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss had struggled for four years to get their fantasy series off the ground. There had been an endless number of meetings, rewrites, negotiations and hiring decisions. "It was a frightening time because it was our first time running a production of any scale," Weiss recalls. "And there are many, many moving parts, human and otherwise, that go into any production, especially one of this size."
EW: Inside Game of Thrones' disastrous original pilot: 'Nobody knew what they were doing'
George R R Martin on Daenerys' and Khal Drogo's wedding night scene and differences to the book:
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN: There are a couple of stories. As a wedding gift, Khal Drogo gives Daenerys a silver horse and she rides away. For a moment you think she's fleeing. Then she turns the horse around and leaps the horse over a big campfire. Drogo is very impressed, and it starts the relationship on a good note. We tried to film this scene. We got a top stunt rider and a top horse, a silver filly, but the filly would not jump that campfire. She got close and then was like, "There's fire there!" and would turn the other way. We tried to film it a half dozen ways. So [director Tom McCarthy] goes, "Put out the fire and we'll do the fire with CGI." They put out the fire and the horse would still not jump the dead fire. It's a smart horse. It knows it's not burning now, but it was burning a little while ago! So they had to scrap that sequence, which was unfortunate, as it was a bonding moment between Dany and Khal Drogo.
Then came the filming of the wedding night. In the Emilia Clarke version, it's rape. It's not rape in my book, and it's not rape in the scene as we filmed it with Tamzin Merchant. It's a seduction. Dany and Drogo don't have the same language. Dany is a little scared but also a little excited, and Drogo is being more considerate. The only words he knows are "yes" or "no." Originally it was a fairly faithful version.
So we're by this little brook. They tied the horses to the trees and there's a seduction scene by the stream. Jason Momoa and Tamzin are naked and "having sex." And suddenly the video guy starts to laugh. The silver filly was not a filly at all. It was a colt. And it was getting visibly excited by watching these two humans. There's this horse in the background with this enormous horse schlong. So that didn't go well either.
Also D&D originally wanted to cut Rickon
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN: The biggest thing was Dan and David called me up and had the idea of eliminating Rickon, the youngest of the Stark children, because he didn't do much in the first book. I said I had important plans for him, so they kept him.
The pilot didn't look right:
MICHAEL LOMBARDO (former HBO programming president): There were some concerns about whether we were getting enough wide shots. Are we getting the coverage we need? We hired the best costume designer and the best art director and shot this in Northern Ireland and Morocco, yet there was very little scope. I remember the quote was, "We could have shot this in Burbank."
IAIN GLEN: Some bigwig at HBO said, "Why the f--- did we go to Morocco? You can't see f---ing diddly squat, we could have shot it in a car park!"
GINA BALIAN: Somebody said, "It looked like it was shot in my backyard."
The tone also felt off, like a series set in the world of Downton Abbey or a Merchant Ivory film, instead of Westeros and Essos.
MICHAEL LOMBARDO: Some scenes were fantastic, like at Winterfell with the family. Arya, Sansa, Tyrion. But there was something about it that felt vaguely similar to British period dramas.
Other problems:
MARK ADDY (Robert Baratheon): We were trying to establish the rules and order of this new world. In the Winterfell courtyard scene, nobody kneeled when the king arrived in the first pilot. You can't play being the king. You can't display "look at how powerful I am." People have to give you that by showing subservience. It has to be afforded to you by others. In the reshoot, everybody kneeled. It made a huge difference in terms of establishing who's in charge.
Another concern was caused by hand‑wringing over the project's fantasy elements. A Song of Ice and Fire is an intensely realistic drama with moments of supernatural magic. But nobody was exactly sure how much Thrones should have of each genre, and it showed.
BRYAN COGMAN: Is it fantasy with dramatic trappings? Is it a drama with fantasy trappings? There was a nervousness about the pilot leaning into the fantasy too much — ultimately to a fault. Key exposition was cut to make the dialogue sound more "real," and as a result, the pilot didn't make much sense. The impulse to not be over-the-top Shakespearian and Tolkien-esque was right — you're trying to make it as grounded as possible — but this is still an epic fantasy, and if you ignore that, it's to the detriment of your story.
One confusing aspect wasn't entirely the filmmakers' fault — they couldn't afford to stage any King's Landing scenes which more firmly established the Lannister family in the re‑shoot. But the dialogue didn't help either. The shocking punch of Jaime pushing Bran out the window seemed nonsensical, as viewers didn't realize that Jaime and Cersei were sibling lovers trying to protect their treasonous secret. The producers tried to help explain the show's backstory by adding at least one flashback (of Ned Stark's father and brother being killed by the Mad King), but that idea was later scrapped as it just seemed to add to the narrative muddiness.
Why HBO still greenlit the show:
MICHAEL LOMBARDO: We were in the conference room and had the producers in for a "come to Jesus" meeting. The question was whether the showrunners thought they nailed it. Because if you're on a different page, that's really a concern. How do we show this pilot to our CEO and convince him to pick this up to series? How do we convince him this is a gamble worth taking? We go into a mode of "how do we fix this."
DAN WEISS: We'd done a lot of soul searching. The one thing I think we did right is we owned all the mistakes. We didn't point fingers. We said: "We know this isn't good, and here is what went wrong and how we would do it differently the next time." We just went down the line. I think they got the sense, which was honest, that we weren't coming in trying to explain why the bugs were features. We were all on the same page that where we want to be is many levels up from this.
CAROLYN STRAUSS (former programming president at HBO; executive producer): There was a lot of begging and pleading. I think what was clearly evident was that there was a show here. This is why you do a pilot, because you're looking at what works and what doesn't and whether this thing has legs. Once certain things were fixed, this would be a story you can tell over many episodes that keeps moving, with characters that keep evolving, but not so fast that you run out of story.
On why Catelyn and Daenerys were recast
MICHAEL LOMBARDO: The actress who played Catelyn decided she didn't want to move to Northern Ireland. I'm like, "What?" Then you have a conversation with yourself about whether to force her to uphold her contract. In retrospect it was one of the best things that could have happened. Michelle Fairley took over the role and was fantastic.
Benioff had spotted Fairley in a London production of Othello, where she played Emilia, whose tragic final scenes of breakdown and murder are not unlike the eventual fate of Catelyn Stark. "Emilia's not a character I generally notice in Othello," Benioff recounted in Cogman's book Inside HBO's Game of Thrones: Seasons 1 & 2. "Iago's wife? Who cares? But Michelle was so absurdly good that I left the theater thinking, 'Who the hell was that? And is she available?' "
But the team's most difficult decision was to recast Daenerys Targaryen. One source said that breaking the news to Merchant was "the hardest phone call [the producers] ever had to make."
MICHAEL LOMBARDO: There was a piece of casting we had to rethink, [a role] that was compromised. We all knew Daenerys's journey was critical. Her scenes with Jason just didn't work.
JASON MOMOA (Khal Drogo): [Merchant] was great. I'm not sure why everything was done. But when Emilia got there that's when everything clicked for me. I wasn't really "there" until she arrived.
BRYAN COGMAN: Everybody involved in making the original pilot scored such a bull's‑eye with so many of our actors. I thought Tamzin did a really good job. It's hard to say why things didn't work out. Ultimately, it's obvious Emilia Clarke was born to play that part.
