Conan O’Brien had an interesting guest last night, when Nikolaj Coster-Waldau appeared to talk about Game of Thrones and related matters. This initial segment reveals some details about an upcoming scene in the series, so it’s something of a mild spoiler ...

... while this anecdote featuring a bathroom stall and George Clooney is just plain funny:

Via James Hibberd at EW, it looks like “Dark Wings, Dark Words” has managed the feat of becoming the second most-viewed episode of the series to date, with its ratings dropping very little from last week’s highly-rated opening. Really steady numbers such as these are a pretty good sign for the show, it goes without saying.

Well, this is a bit earlier than usual: Amazon.com is already listing the Bluray and DVD sets for season 3. No release date as yet, though as usual we suppose that’ll be for next year rather than the holiday season.

In the UK, this year’s nominees for the prestigious BAFTA Television awards have been announced, and Game of Thrones actually has two separate nominations. One of them is a BAFTA-proper—it’s nominated in the International Award category, alongside The Bridge, Homeland, and fellow HBO show Girls—and the other is the Radio Times Audience Award, which is decided by the voting public.

The awards will be handed out on May 12th.

(Thanks to @TataniaRose for bring it to our attention.)

Finished the latest episode of Game of Thrones? We’ve posted our recap, review and analysis, and book-to-screen breakdown over at our episode guide! We’ll have additional content—our video review, and perhaps a few other tidbits—appearing tomorrow and the day after, as they become available.

Access Hollywood have again been at it with some excellent Game of Thrones coverage this year, and we’d thought we should share two recent interviews we’ve particularly enjoyed. First, Mackenzie Crook—who plays Orell, a wildling skinchanger (which, for mysterious reasons, has been simplified to just being a warg—those of you with a bit of knowledge of Germanic or Scandinavian languages, past or present, may understand why this is an inaccuracy)—is finally interviewed at length about his experience of the production and just a bit about his character.

Second, one of the most entertaining actors in the production is Liam Cunningham, who plays Ser Davos Seaworth, who discusses his character’s miraculous survival in this video interview:

Subject says it all! This is earlier than I expected—after the initial first season of a show, it often seems like HBO prefers to wait out renewal news—but it’s pretty much exactly what I expected: a full on renewal for season 4.

Read the press release below:

James Hibberd has the scoop that the premiere episode of season 3 of Game of Thrones, “Valar Dohaeris”, is the most watched episode ever of the series. The initial 9PM showing pulled 4.4 million viewers, while with repeats the show reached 6.7 million viewers. That’s an increase of 13 percent over last year’s premiere. And that’s with the Easter holiday and the finale of AMC’s smash hit The Walking Dead scheduled at the same time. Hibberd notes that the 10PM reairing in particular had strong numbers for a repeat, and he suggests that’s because some viewers switched to the show after Dead was done.

By way of comparison, last year fellow HBO show True Blood scored 5.2 million viewers on the initial airing of their premiere… but just 6.3 million with repeats.

There are some excellent—and rather intriguing—shots in this new critic spot ahead of the premiere tonight:

Continuing our interview series, next up is actress Rose Leslie, who had a memorable turn as Ygritte last season.

In this interview, she gives some hints about things to come, discusses just how often Kit Harington smiles, and much more. I note one place where she laughs… but truth be told, she laughs often and was clearly enjoying herself immensely at being involved in a project like Game of Thrones.

Interview

What can you tell us about season 3?

Why is Ygritte interested in Jon Snow? What piques her interest?

Want more? Read the rest!

David Peterson, creator of the Dothraki language, has written an article for CNN revealing that the producers of Game of Thrones hired him to create two dialects of Valyrian, the ancient language of Valyria: High Valyrian and Low Valyrian. Though it’s light on specific details, it gives a great sense of the process of differentiating one version from another.

Having watched the first four episodes, we can say categorically that Peterson’s done a fantastic job. It sounds quite remarkable in the mouths of the actors who speak it at length.

Continuing our series of interviews, this time it’s Iain Glen on board. Playing Jorah Mormont, he may be rather (a lot) different from the character in the novels, but the dignity and gravity he brings to his performance is a terrific counter-point to Daenerys Targaryen’s youthful energy and determination. In the below interview, we touch on topics such as his luck in filming locations, his views on the violence in the show, and just how Jorah feels about Daenerys.

Interview

How is this season for Jorah and Dany this season?

Want the rest? Read the interview!

The nominees for the 2013 Hugo Awards are in the process of being announced. Last year, Game of Thrones won in the Dramatic Presentation - Long Form category… but perhaps not unexpectedly, this year it did not garner sufficient votes to end up in that category. Instead, it seems enough people nominated a specific episode—“Blackwater”—to win it a place in the Dramatic Presentation - Short Form category. This episode, written by George R.R. Martin himself, is widely considered a crowning achievement for the series to date.

Here’s the full list of nominees in the category, the winners of which wll be announced at Lonestar Con 3, this year’s World Science Fiction convention.

Last week, we received the first four episodes of season 3 of Game of Thrones to review, courtesy of HBO. While our individual episode reviews and coverage will be held until the corresponding episodes air, it has become something of a tradition to share our general impressions of those early episodes. We did it for the first season, and we did it for the second season, so it seemed only right to do it again. The process of discussing even vague impressions will probably reveal some semi-spoilers, so reading on isn’t going to be a good idea if you prefer to stay unspoiled!

But lets just give a general summing up first, and get into the nitty gritty after: these four episodes are on the whole quite good; not perfect, but they may well be the strongest first four episodes as a whole for the series to date (certainly, they’re stronger as a unit than last season’s first four, though none of them are as good as “What is Dead May Never Die”). Some of our biggest fears going into this season seem, so far, to be unfounded. But there are some issues, such as the fact that a number of the anticipated new characters are rather underwhelming when they finally hit the screen and that there are one or two (largely invented) storylines that don’t really feel like they’re gelling for us.  Still, each subsequent episode goes from strength to strength, each one better than the last. So why do we feel cautiously optimistic? We recall that last season, too, the third and fourth episodes impressed us the most and left us pretty excited about what was to come… and then the cracks started to show and real problems developed that led to some major disappointments. Four episodes in a show like this is not enough to really gauge how the rest of the season will be, especially in terms of how well they’ll translate what’s in the novels to the screen.

Want to read the rest? Read it here!

... of HBO’s opening of the traveling exhibit in New York City (more details below), our intrepid reported Ameli captured some pictures of the cast who were present, as well as some of the exhibits (plus a great photo of herself on the Iron Throne—much better than the one I have, from when I visited the set!). And more than that, she had a chance to ask some of the cast members a few quick questions as they shuffled along the carpet. See their answers below!