Westeros

Thanks to our friends over at Sky Altantic’s Thronecast after-show, we have another first look exclusive on longer interview segments they have up with members of the cast and crew. We’ve already posted their Benioff &Weiss and Dance interviews, so let’s close up with my favorite character: Catelyn Stark, and the actor who’s brought her to life, Michelle Fairley.

You can read our own interview with Fairley here, and many others besides in our Features section.

Continuing our series of interviews from the press junket in London that we attended at the end of February—just one more left after this—is with one of the actors who has gotten the most attention from the success of Game of Thrones: Emilia Clarke, the actress who’s brought Daenerys Targaryen to life.

She was as charming and cheerful as you can imagine, meeting with us and fielding questions about her work. Topics range from various aspects of her performance, her familiarity with the novels (on the face of it, she’s probably read them more times than I have!), and a whole lot more. It was a pleasure speaking with her!

Read it here!

Thronecast is almost upon us—following hard on the April 2nd premiere of Game of Thrones on Sky Atlantic in the UK—and they’ve kindly allowed us to have the exclusive first look at some of their interviews from the press junket. We’ve already posted the interview with David Benioff and Dan Weiss, but lets follow that up to revisit with Charles Dance, aka Lord Tywin Lannister, whom we have recently interviewed ourselves.

You’ll get a bit more information… including spoilers, both for the first three novels in the series and for this season, so don’t play the video if that’s a problem!

For many other interviews, visit our featured interview page!

Continuing our series of interviews Ser Jaime Lannister, the Kingslayer. This is actually the third time we’ve interviewed Nikolaj—see here and here—and as always it’s a pleasure to hear from him.

This is the first time we’ve met him in person, and he’s as charming as you might expect. He takes a great deal of relish in this role he plays—a role that he’s indicated (in another interview) features what may well be the best scene he’s ever had to play as an actor—and brings his own perspective to bear on the most loathed knight in the Seven Kingdoms, what makes him tick, and what he wants. And there’s hints, here and there, of things he’s really not allowed to talk about…

Read it here!

Thanks to our friends over at Sky Atlantic’s Thronecast—where Linda and I will, indeed, be resuming our weekly presence!—we’ve received the opportunity to share Kelly-Anne Smith’s interview with Game of Thrones executive producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss from the international press junket that we attened late in February. Here it is!

Stay tuned, another interview is going up shortly (you can catch up on the one’s we’ve published to date here... and we’ve our own interview with Benioff and Weiss set to be released tomorrow!

Continuing our series of interviews from the international press junket—see here for those, and all of our season 1 interviews as well!—we had the chance to meet with and talk to actor Kit Harington about his role as Jon Snow.

The young actor is definitely a favorite with some fans, and he discusses a bit of the fun fans have with the series, while sharing anecdotes from Iceland about the cold, fight scenes, and newcomer to the series Rose Leslie. Plus some intriguing thoughts about what Jon Snow thinks about his mother, these days, as well as the benefits (and pitfalls!) of working in scenes that feature significant digital elements (i.e. direwolves).

Read it here!

P.S.

This is actually the second interview we had with Kit—he was kind enough to talk to us last year as well, and you can see that interview here. And for those hungry for more interviews? Not one, but two interviews on Saturday, leading up to a final interview from the junket on Sunday. Don’t forget that Sunday is #GoTDay, and that we’ll be live commenting the first episode of season 1, “Winter is Coming”, while it airs on HBO2. See here for more, and find out who else is going to be commenting the episodes during the Game of Thrones marathon!

A very long, very interesting interview with GRRM has just been published over at Marvel.com, the official website of Marvel Comics. It’s very comics-centric, reaching back to his fan letters in the 60’s, his visits to Comic-Con, his views on the recent Marvel movies, and more. And, yes, some A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones talk.

Check it out!

An article concerning the question of why British accents dominate fantasy takes a cool little detour to the A Song of Ice and Fire forum, where the journalist writing the article—Brian Wheeler—started a thread to query fans on the board on the topic. Rather neat, and an interesting question that ties into the general notion that the “past” sounds English, for whatever reason.

Iain Glen, who plays Ser Jorah Mormont in HBO’s Game of Thrones, also touched on the topic in our interview with him late last month.

HBO has declared that this Sunday will be #GoTDay on Twitter—they want that tag trending, and if the rabid fans can bring Twitter to its knees, all the better! Leading up the much-anticipated premiere of the first episode, “The North Remembers”, HBO will be running a marathon featuring all ten episodes of the first season on HBO2, starting from 10:30AM Eastern, 7:30 AM Pacific.

And just to make sure Twitter starts buckling, they’ve announced that HBO Connect’s social platform is going to be put to work, featuring live tweeting commentaries and Q&As with fan favorites like Kristian Nairn and Finn Jones, with writer Bryan Cogman... and with fan sites like Winter is Coming and… err, well, Westeros.org!

And to kick it off? That’d be us! Tune in to HBO2 (or, if you don’t have it, start up your Bluray or DVD—that’s what we’ll be doing!) at 10:30 Eastern (7:30 Pacific—I know, who wakes up that early on a Sunday except masochists and fanatics?) on Sunday, hop on over to our snazzy, official HBO Connect page, and join the conversation as we all watch and discuss episode 1 of season 1, “Winter is Coming”

And another interesting cross promotion effort for Game of Thrones, this time via the official Facebook page: fifty people will get one of five house sigils tattooed on their arms by tattoo artists at NY Ink, including Ami James.

Here’s the details:

Time: March 30th (TODAY) from 12PM to 8PM
Place: Wooster Street Social Club, 43 Wooster Street between Grand & Broome, SOHO, NYC
What: First come, first serve from 12-8, maximum of 50 people.

If you’re interested, I suspect it may make sense to get to that line early. And if you get one? Make sure to share a picture or two!

These two essays are terrific reads, and they come from the the venerable Foreign Affairs magazine no less! The first from Charli Carpenter is a response to arguments that the series embodies political realism, noting that some of its features belong more in the realm of human security than realpolitik. Very interesting reading, and some trenchant remarks from Professor Carpenter regarding the subject of gender depiction in the novels (make sure to check out this amusing post on the topic of Drogo’s war speech that she wrote last year).

And the other… well, that one just had me amazed. Historian Kelly DeVries (whose Infantry Warfare in the Early Fourteenth Century is a must-read for anyone with a serious interest in medieval society and warfare) looks at the series through a historical lens, noting that Martin has eschewed the general boring facets of medieval life (really, life in pretty much any time period is generally boring when looked at as a whole—the moments of terror tend to be few and far between for most people at most times) to dramatize things in a way that DeVries approves.

The Wall Street Journal’s John Jurgenson has a very interesting article concerning the production of the second season. Here’s a few useful statistics:

• Average of 9.3. million viewers, vs. 10.7 million for Boardwalk and a peak of 13 million for True Blood in its third season.
• First season budget of roughly $60 million (which we’ve reported before), now up roughly 15% (so $69 million, give or take—with hints that a large part of it was due to episode 9, “Blackwater”, written by GRRM.)
• 106 shooting days, 3/4ths spent with two units (“Dragon” and “Wolf”) filming simultaneously.
• For the Battle of the Blackwater, David and Dan initially wanted to build 9 ship sets. They got 1.

Also of interest? Season 3 location scouting is already going on, though there’s been no official greenlight. Expect it on Monday or Tuesday at the latest—we’re 100% confident that season 3 is a no-brainer, at this stage. The only real question is if they’ll announce they’re ordering season 4 as well (beware rumors that they’ll film two seasons back to back, however—deeply unlikely).

Gods, do I love baseball, and the MLB & HBO for teaming up to cross-promote the April 1st premiere of Game of Thrones and April 4th opening day of the season with this beautifully edited video:

Amazing. No real new clips, though I do believe the fellow on fire is glimpsed slightly earlier than before. And of course, the last word is Tyrion’s.

Something must be in the air, because as spring comes around, thoughts clearly turn towards traveling for some. And in this case, they seem to have informed two quite different (and quite good!) interviews from two travel sites. George R.R Martin is certainly no stranger to travel, and in fact is presently in the UK ahead of Eastercon and his appearance at the Bloomsbury Theatre.

First up, Josh Roberts conducts an excellent interview with George for Smarter Travel. As noted at the top of the interview, it has some major spoilers for all five novels in the series, but it’s noted when they’re crossing into the spoiler section. Here’s a favorite part from it:

Some last bits of promotional material sneaking out from HBO. This time, we’ve two new videos featuring a look at new characters and new destinations that we’ll be seeing this season. Good stuff, and an excellent chance to hear from some of the newest cast members: