Westeros

An interview long in the making, we finally got to sit down with Ryan Condal, lead writer, executive producer, and now sole show runner of House of the Dragon last week to talk about the show. After Linda had a chance to say hello then headed off to keep an eye on our very rambunctious puppy Lancelot, we started the interview.

We open up with a question on post-production, and then get into the weeds on favorite book characters, depictions of violence, heraldry, a forgotten Valyrian house, the change from book canon when casting the Velaryons, whether Ryan will continue with the show after completing this particular story, and more.

Click here for the interview!

Ryan Condal behind the scenes with a maquette of Caraxes. ©️ Ollie Upton/HBO

We’ve been in the midst of a vacation over here a Westeros, but George R.R. Martin has been keeping busy! A recent Not a Blog post goes into some length about the state of the highly-anticipated The Winds of Winter, a post which seems to have been prompted after a recent round of interviews (including this excellent interview by the team at Game of Owns). It’s the lengthiest update he’s given on the book in some years, and is well worth reading closely. And while he’s at it, George reveals how the story has been slowly moving further and further away from what he envisioned years earlier, even as late as when he met with the showrunners of Game of Thrones to discuss his plans.

The Hollywood Reporter has published an interview with George R.R. Martin from the red carpet of the Game of Thrones premiere.

Musing on how time has flown since the series started, he also briefly has time to talk about the forthcoming pilot for a successor show, which GRRM has dubbed “The Long Night” despite HBO’s insisting that that’s not the official title.

Per the interview:

It’s always a pleasure to interview writer and story editor Bryan Cogman, who has so far written an episode of each season, including what are amounting to two of our personal favorites of the series: “What is Dead May Never Die” and his season three episode, “Kissed by Fire”.

Below, I talk with Bryan about the episode, the introduction of new characters, his proudest moments, and much more. It’s a lengthy one but, we hope, a good one. Enjoy!

Interview

All right, thanks so much for taking the time, first off!

Now, often episodes seem to have their titles decided at the last minute—George’s episode went through a couple of different names before it was settled. Was “Kissed by Fire” always the title you preferred for your episode?

To read the rest, go to the full interview.

Very recently, Linda and I were interviewed by Andrew Burns for the UK’s The Big Issue, a widely-circulated magazine that will likely be familiar to many in the UK.

Not sold on newstands, it’s only sold by homeless men and women who are given a means to work and an opportunity to improve their lives. You’ll find it being sold in many of the UK’s cities.

We’d been told that they needed a picture of us for the feature they’re writing on Game of Thrones... ... but it was quite the surprise to discover that we’re on the cover! The magazine will be on sale this week, and besides our interview, it also features a broader look at the series and show, and an editorial piece on fantasy literature and its appeal in the current economic climate.

If you’re in a UK, definitely give it a look if you’ve the opportunity. And if you see it, let us know what you think!

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!

Now up is the third in our series of actor interviews leading up to the premiere of Game of Thrones on March 31st (April 1st in the UK, Scandinavia, and elsewhere). This time around, it’s an interview with the always-personable Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays Jaime Lannister, the Kingslayer. Read below as he discusses Jaime’s relationships with Cerseia and Brienne, the ways that Jaime defines himself, and more!

And as it happens, this is also our third interview with Nikolaj to date, and he remains as charming and entertaining as always. The interview transcript below doesn’t really go very far to indicate just how engaging he can be to talk with, and how funny. Despite the provison from HBO that details for season 3 were not really permitted to be discussed, Nikolaj provided some small suggestions about how the story may go in the course of discussing the series, his character, and the fans.

Interview

So, what can you tell us about the new season?

Want more? Read the rest!

Well, hot on the heels of our NewNowNext Award nomination, we can reveal that the latest issue of Rolling Stone has a brief profile of yours truly (aka Elio). Yes, rather a surprise when they contacted us! It was nice to discuss our involvement with the website and the fandom and so on, although I do see that the hour-long conversation lost some things in translation when it was boiled down to the smaller article…

Over at EW, James Hibberd has posted the first of fifteen exclusive interviews ahead of the March 31st premiere of Game of Thrones. The first interview features Gwendoline Christie—Brienne of Tarth on the show—discussing initial reactions to her casting and her character’s journey, with just a wee bit of detail regarding scenes she’s filmed for this season.

Check it out, and keep an eye on the #EWThrones hashtag on Twitter to learn when the rest of the interviews are published, as they will be once each weekday until the premiere.

Last night, we posted about the Game of Thrones-themed Sports Illustrated Power Issue. We now have the podcast—hosted by Richard Deitsch—with GRRM, which you can find here along with a partial transcript of some of Martin’s remarks.

It’s very much sports-oriented, but there’s some remarks that touch on the characters and the setting (such as Martin’s comparison of knights to athletes).

We’ve placed this interview in the So Spake Martin collection, where you’ll find a great deal of links to interviews, correspondence, and reports from readings, panels, and conventions.

At some point, I need to gather up all these interviews with actors that have been sneaking out the last month or two, and just make a big post with them all. Until then, however, here’s a interview with Rose Leslie, who plays Ygritte on Game of Thrones, courtesy of Access Hollywood. Nice to hear from her, as she didn’t get much in the way of attention for the second season when her role was something of a late entry into the series.

Here’s a couple of fascinating tidbits from interviews with Ciarán Hinds and James Purefory, both who had been on HBO’s Rome—a fine show, one of the most lavish productions ever put to screen as a regular hour long drama—and who have been asked (for various reasons) to remark on HBO’s Game of Thrones. Of course, only one of these actors is actually on the show, but the other has been a fan-favorite when it comes to casting speculation…

First, of course, is Ciarán Hinds, the actor cast as Mance Rayder whom we recently glimpsed in HBO’s latest video. Speaking to Irish Central, Hinds had the following to say about the first season of the show when he decided to catch up to it:

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, everyone’s favorite Kingslayer, was recently in Canada to promote his new film, Mama, a Guillermo del Toro-produced horror film that’s been getting some positive press.

Of course, where there’s film promotion, there are interviews. One of the best interviewers in Canada is George Stroumboulopoulos, who had a great interview with George R.R. Martin last year, and it looks like his interview with Coster-Waldau is similarly interesting. Here’s

the whole interview which will air tonight on CBC Television at 7PM, and should be on-line at the George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight Youtube channel soon thereafter, which features some discussion of Game of Thrones at the 3:55 mark:

We’ve posted a newly-available video to the So Spake Martin collection from TIFF. Although released in December, it was recorded at a private “Master Class” talk in March. It’s lengthy, and quite excellent, and contains hints of things to come later in the series.

Make sure to also watch the “In Conversation” public event that was hosted the following (or possibly the prior) day, if you’ve not seen it before.

It looks like SciFi Now managed a brief interview with editor and writer Bryan Cogman about the third season while it was still filming. He notes he had just watched the filming of one of the “iconic sword fights” in the series, and comments that he knows a few things about the overall story, and suspects David Benioff and Dan Weiss know a bit more.