STAYING IN
HERE BE DRAGONS Henry Northmore talks to the cast of Game of Thrones as the fantasy epic returns for its eagerly anticipated third season
G ame of Thrones can’t have been an easy sell to the executives at HBO. George RR Martin’s sprawling series of novels may have been critically acclaimed but most fantasy TV is of the Xena: Warrior Princess or Merlin ilk. Fantasy is rarely taken seriously despite the anomaly of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. The budget for the first season has been estimated at $50-60 million, a massive investment for any company.
Now – after all the Emmys, Golden Globes and Hugo Awards – it doesn’t seem like such a crazy risk. They must have been confident that the Dungeons & Dragons crowd would tune in but they can’t have expected it to be such a hit beyond the geeks. ‘What is surprising is the range of people that have approached me,’ adds Michelle Fairley (who plays Lady Catelyn Stark). ‘I meet people I never imagined would be interested in this sort of genre, and I think that is testament to the series. I think the appeal is that it is totally about the characters, and the ordeals they find themselves in.’
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It fell to showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss to take the source material and adapt it for television. Benioff himself coined the phrase ‘The Sopranos in Middle-earth’ that was soon taken up by the world’s media. It was a perfect soundbite, Game of Thrones easily matches the acting and drama of David Chase’s tricate detail of Tolkien’s mob story and the intricate detail of Tolkien’s magnum opus.
There may be a backdrop of swords and sorcery but GoT is a character driven t show. ‘That’s what y George did so cleverly ,’ within the novels,’ He explains Fairley. ‘He eal creates extremely real ces people who audiences hey can care about. They mas have the same dilemmas like that we all have, like their worrying their about
families or just surviving in this world. These characters experience grief, war and loss, just like real people. It resonates because of that, irrespective of the setting. It’s good drama. It’s wonderful drama.’ Game of Thrones is set in a world split into various kingdoms constantly vying for supremacy, the two most powerful being the stoic Starks who are willing to stand up to the ruling Lannisters, now headed by the evil boy- King Joffrey (a cowardly tyrant played with real venom by the young Jack Gleeson). Even the villains are incredibly well written with rich back stories. ‘I like the Lannisters,’ says Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays errant knight Jaime La Jaime Lannister, who is Joffrey’s uncle/fat uncle/father (it’s complicated and very tw very twisted). ‘There’s a brutal honesty honesty about the family. I’m not sure ab sure about Joffrey. He has some issues issues . . .’ The The show isn’t afraid to wrong foot y foot you as the story dictates, for for example (spoiler alert) Sean Sean Bean was the obvious head headline star but he had been exec executed by the end of the firs first season. While there is a p a particular focus on young ac actors in gritty roles and as as this is cable TV expect