Game of Thrones Showrunners Discuss Season 5

Entertainment Weekly conducted an extensive interview with Game of Thrones Showrunners David Benioff, Dan Weiss and Producer Bryan Cogman. They had a lot to say about the directions for the central characters in the upcoming season and the production challenges that the season brought.

EW asks: “Now that you’re done shooting, what strikes you as the most unique thing about the new season?”

David Benioff: “Worlds are colliding. For so long, we’ve been in separate continents, and finally this season we’re starting to see some crossover. Tyrion and Arya—at end of season 4, we saw two major characters bound for Essos. That changes everything for us. It’s exciting to see our familiar characters in unfamiliar locales and interact with each other, and hopefully we’ll see more of this as the story progresses.”

Dan Weiss: “It’s almost like Boggle—or is it Yahtzee?—where you shake up the dice and reshuffle. One of the pleasures of the show is being able to breathe [in] new energy and life, not just by doing things bigger and more elaborate—which we are going to be doing—but by playing people against each other who we’re really invested in, who have never met before in the show.”

Bryan Cogman: “The storylines are blending in exciting ways. It’s like Phase 2 of Thrones. The set pieces and scope of the world has expanded hugely. It’s going to be a very rich season. Also, a lot of our major characters in one way or another find themselves in positions of power. Some are seeking it, and some stumble into it. And if there’s one common thread, it’s what they do in these positions of power—you got this thing, so what happens next? What’s great about George’s world is exploring what it really means to be a leader and a ruler. You’re going to see more of the intricacies of politics in a fascinating way. The other thing is having characters come into contact with one another.”

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EW also asked Benioff about the arcs for the major characters this season:

Arya [Maisie Williams]?

Benioff: “Arya is going to Braavos to find her destiny there, which is fascinating for us. She’s been wandering the moors for years in the same costume, and this year she gets a new costume, new hairdo, new people to pal around with—or fight with, as the case may be. It’s an exciting season for Arya and Maisie loves it.”

Jon Snow [Kit Harington]?

Benioff: “It’s a huge season for Jon. He’s really stepping up and assuming the mantle of leadership. In the wake of the Battle for Castle Black, he’s shown he’s a leader of men. He took control and really saved the day. This season, he starts from a position of more authority than he’s ever had before, and all the responsibilities and pressures that come from that. He’s caught between two powerful kings, Stannis Baratheon [Stephen Dillane] and Mance Rayder [Ciarán Hinds], both of whom he admires in some ways but also finds frustrating because neither is willing to compromise.”

Cersei [Lena Headey]?

Benioff: “In some ways, she’s really alone now. Cersei is not someone who should be on her own for too long because she has dark ideas, and now has the means to implement those ideas. It’s a powerhouse season for the character, and the way Lena has stepped into that has been incredible to watch.”

Dany [Emilia Clarke]?

Benioff: “She’s been incredibly successful as a conquerer, and now she’s having difficulty ruling. Conquering is binary—you either lose or win. But ruling is making complicated decisions every day, where there often are no right answers. It’s just a matter of who you’re going to piss off over the course of the day. She’s struggling to maintain her sense of justice and to do the right thing, and learning that’s impossible when ruling a city as large as Meereen.”

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Weiss expressed his relief and excitement that Dorne got to be a part of the show this season, saying that it’s such a more politically palatable region than the rest of the show. That we’ll get so see Ellaria Sand and the Sand Snakes this season. “[Prince Oberyn Martell] opened up a tiny window into this world last season, and now you get to go through that window and see what kind of world this is that made this person we loved so much.”

Weiss also alluded to two non specifc scenes appearing this season “that are so much larger in scale than anything we’ve tried to do. Maybe 17 days to shoot one sequence. That’s something we’ve never attempted before. There are lot of special effects pieces in that scene.”

EW also asked about the ever encroaching endpoint of the currently published books in the A Song of Ice and Fire Series and how that affects the actors.

Benioff: “Everybody’s curious. Some actors don’t want to know. Some want to know everything. But if an actor knows their character is going to die at a certain time, we don’t want them playing like that’s going to be their fate.”

EW: “The ratings go up every year. Does that add pressure to keep improving the show?”

Weiss: “Yep. People who watch the show, they almost enter into an unspoken contract with you, and you feel pressure to keep them excited. They’ve done you the favor of choosing your show over the many many other shows they could be watching for that 10 hours a year, and it feels like you owe them something.”

Benioff: “The first year working in Northern Ireland, we go through customs, and the customs officials would go, ‘What are you working on?’ ‘A TV show.’ ‘Which show is it?’ ‘Game of Thrones.’ ‘Is that some kind of game show?’ Now we come through and they say: ‘Don’t kill Arya!’”

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Game of Thrones Season 5 premieres April 12^th on HBO!