You haven’t seen the originalGame of Thronespilot.
Martin’s bestselling novels to life very nearly sunk the series.
The following picks up midway through the original pilot’s production in 2009.
Sophie Turner, Richard Madden, Sean Bean, and Michelle Fairley in the first episode of ‘Game of Thrones’.HBO
There had been an endless number of meetings, rewrites, negotiations, and hiring decisions.
Finally, the cameras were rolling in Northern Ireland and Morocco.
During King Robert’s arrival, I remember finding the whole thing ridiculous.
HBO
The absurdity of doing this parallel universe with these very noble men.
It’s a very fine balance between being serious and believing it and just being cosplayers.
There was certainly not a sense that this was going to be some game-changer for anyone.
Helen Sloan/HBO
But we had a lot of fun.
In the Winterfell courtyard scene, nobody kneeled when the king arrived in the first pilot.
you could’t play being the king.
it’s possible for you to’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.
Not that I’m complaining, I loved it.
It didn’t seem important enough to the characters.
No one has seen these in a million years!
This is like seeing dinosaurs!
It’s not like finding puppies!"
And everyone’s sort of chuckling.
CHRISTOPHER NEWMAN (producer): Joffrey had a different haircut.
The modern cut in the version that aired gave him more spitefulness.
You started to feel the wheels coming off by the time we got to Morocco.
Except this version shot Daenerys’s wedding at night, among several other differences.
I played a Pentoshi nobleman with beard extensions and an enormous hat.
I looked like an idiot, but it was fun.
HARRY LLOYD (Viserys Targaryen): I had a different wig.
It was titanium and silver, and it was shorter and a bob.
Looking back, it was a mistake.
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.
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.
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!
Then came the filming of the wedding night.
In theEmilia Clarkeversion, it’s rape.
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.
The experience was, to put it mildly, unpleasant.
DAVID BENIOFF: I showed it to my brotherinlaw and sisterinlaw and just watched their reactions.
You could tell watching their faces that they were bored.
It wasn’t anything they said.
They were trying to be nice.
How much higher than their average register is the word “good”?
That’s a gauge of how f—ed you are.
Our “good” was in dog-whistle territory.
There were others who weren’t trying to be nice but were actually trying to be helpful.
[Veteran television producer] Craig Mazin told us: “You guys have a massive problem.”
One frequently cited issue at HBO was that the pilot lacked “scope.
Are we getting the coverage we need?
I remember the quote was, “We could have shot this in Burbank.”
GINA BALIAN: Somebody said, “It looked like it was shot in my backyard.”
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.
But nobody was exactly sure how muchThronesshould 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 muchultimately to a fault.
I said I had important plans for him, so they kept him.
But the dialogue didn’t help either.
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN:I liked the pilot.
I realized later that I was a poor person to judge because I was too close to it.
Some didn’t know Jaime and Cersei were brother and sister.
Well that wasn’t a problem for me!
My great familiarity with the material made it hard for me to objectively judge.
I liked that they kept a considerable level of complexity.
I’m told I’m under penalty of death if I ever show it to anyone.
The producers knew they were in deep trouble.
DAVID BENIOFF:HBO was very much on the fence.
And this was a very expensive project.
DAN WEISS:It seemed like Mike was leaning toward no.
He was not at all pleased, and for good reason.
He decided maybe it would be better to just take the loss on this one.
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 just went down the line.
We were all on the same page that where we want to be is many levels up from this.
I think what was clearly evident was that there was a show here.
The company had already sunk $10 million into a dragon drama.
Would they double down?
DAVID BENIOFF: We knew going into that screening that his decision was going to make or break us.
It was a very tense hour while waiting for a phone call from Gina.
DAN WEISS: The line about pain being a great teacher is true.
It was one of the most horrible feelings I can remember.
DAVID BENIOFF: Then Richard came out and said, “You know, let’s make this.”
It needed to be fixed; it needed to be reshot.
But the overall emotional response was that you could feel how engaging it could be.
HBO ordered 10 episodes ofGame of Thrones, including a reshot pilot.
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.
“Iago’s wife?
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.
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.
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.
Second chances in Hollywood are rare.
The producers, cast, and crew were determined not to blow it.
HARRY LLOYD: We were very lucky to be given a $10 million-dollar rehearsal.
Fire Cannot Kill a Dragonwill be published Oct. 6 and isavailable for preorder now.
