BATTLE ROYALE
Kingdoms are ready to rumble as ‘Game of Thrones’ resumes
There’s no peace for the cast and crew of “Game of Thrones” — even between battle scenes.
Nikolaj CosterWaldau, who plays the sistersmooching Jaime Lannister in the HBO fantasy series, found that out the hard way a few seasons ago.
He was filming a scene in Northern Ireland in which he was a prisoner of war, and hundreds of locals served as extras.
“We did a couple of takes that were absolutely fine but then I wanted to up the ante, so I shouted to all of them some very unflattering things about their mothers and sisters and asked them not to hold back," the Danish actor tells the Daily News. “I also shouted something about their poor fighting spirit. Very stupid. These are Northern Irish lads. They are certainly not missing in the fighting spirit category.”
And so they took their anger out on the actor, who turns 47 on July 27, while filming.
“[They figured] ‘Who will notice if you rough him up a little more than what was planned?’” Coster-Waldau says of the extras. “So, they did. Almost knocked me out. I was bruised after. A little disoriented.”
“The director was happy, but asked me if I wanted another go. I respectfully declined.”
And that was nothing, compared to what Coster-Waldau says he went through while shooting Season 7 of the hit show, which premieres this Sunday at 9 p.m. “In Season 7, I did the biggest fight scene I have done so far on ‘Game of Thrones,’” Coster-Waldau teases. “There are a couple of good war stories from (the upcoming season), but sharing them now would be impossible without getting into spoiler country.” Yes, secrecy permeates everything about the yet-to-air season. And since the show has long surpassed novelist George R.R. Martin’s written source material, fans know as much as character Jon Snow about what’s going down in these seven episodes. But it doesn’t take a three-eyed raven to foresee that “Game of Thrones” is headed into an extra bloody penultimate season.
Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) is consolidating her hold on the Iron Throne; Snow (Kit Harington) and Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) are bracing for a showdown with the undead army of White Walkers; conqueror Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) has reached the shores of Westeros with her army and three fully-grown dragons.
Spoiler alert: those dragons are not vegetarians.
“It’s very safe to say
everything is on a bigger scale,” stunt coordinator Rowley Irlam reveals. “David Benioff (coshowrunner along with D.B. Weiss) has mentioned that we set fire to an awful lot of people this year, so I think you can expect there’ll be quite a lot of dragon work this season.
“We did 73 full body burns in one sequence this year in under 10 days. We set fire to 20 guys at once. I think they’re both probably records.”
Irlam says fans can expect more big battles on screen, including one that required 65 stunt performers, 50 horses and 500 extras — the beginnings of an army that will be 20 times as big through the magic of CGI (computer-generated imagery) and editing. It promises to be even more epic than last season’s now-legendary “Battle of the Bastards,” which featured 500 extras being crushed together in a mound of the dead and dying as survivors battled on top of them.
Irlam admits he was worried about that scene: “They were all meant to be moaning and groaning in the scene, so if anyone was actually in trouble and screaming and moaning (for real), you wouldn’t really know.”
So, Irlam said he devised a safe word for actors and extras to scream out for help. The word? “Banana.” Having avoided the indignity of shouting out a fruit during the filming of that previous battle, Harington has since amassed some fresh war stories from Season 7.
“Kit got ‘Game of Thrones’ straight out of drama school, so he’s been hacking and slashing for seven years now,” Irlam says. “He’s actually gotten very good with the sword.”
Then again, it’s nothing compared to what Benioff and Weiss have planned for Season 8, which is scheduled to begin filming in a few months.
“It’s only going to get worse,” Irlam laments. “We’re going to spending a lot of time fighting during January, February and March at night. I’m a bit like, ‘OK this is going to be grim.’ It already feels like winter in Belfast (where much of the show is shot) in the middle of August.”
Winter really is coming.