When Kit Harington entered the conference room, he had no idea what to expect.
The entire six-episode season arrived at once, protected by layers of password security.
Sophie Turner flew through her copies in record time, quickly messaging the producers her reaction.
“It was completely overwhelming,” says the actress, who plays Sansa Stark.
“Afterwards I felt numb, and I had to take a walk for hours.”
Others, likeEmilia Clarke(Daenerys Targaryen), first had to hurry home to get some privacy.
“I turned to my best mate and was like, ‘Oh my God!
I gotta go!
I gotta go!'”
“And I completely flipped out.”
She then settled in for a reading session with a cup of tea.
“Genuinely the effect it had on me was profound,” Clarke adds.
“Peter Dinklage, meanwhile, broke his years-long habit of checking immediately to see if Tyrion Lannister survives.
“This was the first time ever that I didn’t skip to the end,” he says.
The cast then journeyed to Belfast to gather in a production office for the formal read-through.
he grouses) and Harington, who outright refused to read anything in advance.
So, yes: Jon Snow, quite literally, knew nothing.
At one point, Harington wept.
Later, he cried a second time.
They were already thinking about their final season, and it worried them.
During its second season, the fantasy drama averaged 10.3 million viewers across all platforms.
Because when they first pitchedThronesto HBO, they hadn’t exactly been honest.
And now they were working every day toward a finale that was impossible to make.
“The worlds get so big, the battles get so massive.”
“It’s what we’re working towards in a perfect world,” Weiss said.
Behind the scenes, the web connection brass gently shot down the movie idea.
Only with that kind of leverage do your towering ambitions begin to look like reasonable requests.
You don’t want to f it up.”
What’s being filmed here is episode 6, the series finale.
Like Harington going into the table read, I don’t know anything about the final season’s storyline.
I look around at a meticulously constructed set that I’ve never seen on the show before.
There is absolutely nothing more that can be said about that scene at this time.
“You’re in possession of something millions of people want to know.
It’s such a bizarre feeling.
And between now and when it comes out, I’m gonna be drunk at some point.”
Theories abound online, but they are guesses.
“Drone killer” guns were used to guard against any peeping robots attempting to fly over the set.
“It gets highly confusing when you should probably remember who is who,” Turner says.
At some point HBO will release a proper final-season trailer revealing more.
Instead of King Robert’s procession arriving, it’s Daenerys and her army.
Last April a crew member revealed thatGame of Throneshad wrapped 55 night shoots while filming a battle.
This wildly understated what really happened.
The 55 nights were only for the battle’s outdoor scenes at the Winterfell set.
Filming then moved into the studio, where Sapochnik continued shooting the same battlefor weeks after that.
“It’s brutal,” Dinklage says.
“It makes the Battle of the Bastards look like a theme park.”
“Having the largest battle doesn’t sound very exciting it actually sounds pretty boring,” Benioff says.
The ground is covered with snow and blood.
The air is thick with smoke from the fire pits.
you’re free to turn any direction and only see more Winterfell.
It’s easy to feel like you’ve somehow wandered into Westeros.
Scenes that normally might take a day to film now took several.
“Everything feels more intense.
Lena Headey, who plays Cersei Lannister, agrees: “There was a great sense of grief.
It’s a huge sense of loss, like we’ll never have anything like this again.”
More tears, like during the table read.
You know, Harington will actually reveal why he cried that second time.
“The second time was the very end,” Harington says.
“This read ‘End ofGame of Thrones.'”
And follow @jameshibberdon Twitter for final season updates.
