GETTING MEDIEVAL
‘Game of Thrones’ actors say Castle Black set helped put them in the right frame of mind
LARNE, NORTHERN IRELAND — At first glance, the dark, smoky castle seems to have been standing for eons. But if it were human, the keep would be just starting kindergarten.
Castle Black, a major setting in HBO’s epic fantasy “Game of Thrones,” is a full-scale set built just over five years ago. It has gates, a courtyard, two levels and about a dozen rooms.
Last year it was the backdrop for one of the show’s most epic battles, a whiteknuckled brawl between the Night’s Watch — a military order which holds and guards the Wall, an immense ice structure which separates the northern border of the realm’s Seven Kingdoms from the mysterious, snowy lands beyond — and an army of wildlings, humans trapped on the wrong side of the Wall.
On the show, starting its fifth season Sunday, the Night’s Watch is currently under the command of Lord Commander Alliser Thorne, played by veteran actor Owen Teale.
“I don’t go anywhere else on this production — I’ve been here since the beginning,” says Teale, who huddled with the Daily News during a production break to talk “Thrones” on a chilly November afternoon in one of Castle Black’s many rooms.
He’s joined by John Bradley-West, who plays the steel-hearted but lovable Night’s Watchman Samwell Tarly, and Hannah Murray, who plays Gilly, Sam’s tragic love interest.
“It’s like home now,” West says of the elaborate set, built in a 220-year-old cement quarry about 40 minutes north of Belfast, where the show’s production is based.
West leans forward in his chair, making the rustic floorboards creak. “All the interiors from season one were done in these rooms,” he gestures to the thick wooden walls, which smell like smoke. Outside hundreds of crewmembers can be heard moving heavy equipment around as they prepare the courtyard for a new scene.
The task becomes even more difficult thanks to the pouring rain and the thick, red mud that sucks at everyone’s boots. At the top of a crane, a figure swings a giant tube that belches fake snow.
“You know, the snow is made out of tissue,” says West, flicking an errant paper flake from his eyebrow. “Which can be a problem when it mixes with the inevitable rain.”
Murray chimes in. “The old stuff was worse though, you used to breathe it in and it made you feel sick.”
The weather, the mud and the gorgeous yet dank castle help the actors get into the right frame of mind for their work, which is to tell one the darker storylines in “Game of Thrones.” “It’s immersive,” says West. “A lot of people ask how I get into such a black place for this character,” says Teale. “They say (Thorne) seems like such a depressed guy. But this place helps, because once you get (in that mood) you don’t get out of it. After a while this place gets to you — it’s the most incredible atmosphere.”
Murray notes, “I always find it amazing that there are certain places that you can be on this set where you get completely immersed. It’s uncanny. It really feels like you’re on a different world, in a different place.”
Teale says that last season’s climatic battle was as difficult to film as it was exciting to watch.
“What we went through in order to shoot that battle is just extraordinary, it was just a few days and nights of work but the amount of rain that fell was...”
“...Biblical,” West finishes Teale’s thought. “It was nothing like we’d ever experienced before.”
Some crew members note that the experience led to a great deal of tinkering with the drain system beneath the set in a bid to avoid the near disaster that occurred last year.
“At the beginning of that battle scene last season I came down a flight of steps and give a speech,” says Throne. “It was a very inspiring ‘Henry V’ moment, and in a way it was coming from the most unlikely character — when the chips are down he says, we can do this! And in the morning this castle will still stand!”
Teale says that it took several takes to get the speech just right and each time the cameras began to roll, it began
to rain harder. “I tried to point out that there was literally water collecting on the bottom at such a fast rate that I couldn’t walk through it without wading.”
He sais that the crew halted the shoot to lay down a system of boards and planks so the actors wouldn’t sink in the middle of the scene.
“So for the next take I go back up the steps and maybe six or seven minutes go by and we start to shoot,” says Teale. “I come down again and the boards are flooded, completely under water.”
West laughs. “They were not so much boards, as rafts.”
The three are quick to point out that the scale of “Game of Thrones” is so large that many main players in the cast have never actually met — or if they have its only been for brief moments at events to promote the show.
“With this show, the cast is so large, and the logic and the geography of the fictional landscape is so vast that it can feel a bit fragmented sometimes,” says West. “But when it’s really boiled down to a primary cast of five or six for a whole episode, that’s when bonds are formed and we feel like we're struggling for the greater good.”
“I’ve never met Emilia (Clarke),” says Teale. “Iain Glen and I are old friends, we’ve played brothers twice in movies — and I’ve never seen him once on this show.”
West adds, "The best chance you’ve got to see or meet anyone from other parts of the show is at big press events, the premieres or ComicCons. I’ve always felt — even with people in the cast that I’ve never met before — that there’s still ties that bind you.”
And yet, there’s a sense of possessiveness when it comes to their cadre, tucked away for years in a dank, rural quarry.
“This season you’ll see that stories that have been separate start to merge and characters that have been worlds away from each other meet,” says West. “When some of them got here I sort of felt that they were outsiders and didn’t fit very well with the dynamic at first,” he admits.
“I felt that way when we did the battle of Castle Black at the end of season four and I had to do this huge fight with Tormund (Kristofer Hivju),” says Teale. “There was a part of me that knows every inch of this castle and I was defending it. It was an organic thing that drove the scene for me. Parts of me were screaming, ‘This not your place! Get out of here! We’ve spent our lives in this castle for the last five years. Go!’”