The power behind the throne

Swords, dragons and shelves of bloody props. As a new series of ‘Game of Thrones’ begins, Craig McLean tours television’s most extraordinary set

On Belfast docks, they’re preparing for war. Here in the Titanic Quarter – named after the city’s previous biggest production – the cast, crew and creative departments of Game of Thrones are hard at work. It is early days in the filming of season seven of the hit HBO fantasy drama, but already a sense of an ending infuses proceedings. As its legions of fans are well aware, the battle for Westeros is reaching a climax, with the rival Houses of Stark, Lannister and Targaryen converging for an almighty clash. The end is nigh in television terms too – there are only two truncated series and 13 episodes remaining of this global phenomenon.

In the Armourers’, piles of freshly forged weapons – broadswords, rapiers, épées – are stacked high. In the Leatherwork and Metalwork ateliers, racks of uniforms and armour are being stitched and welded. In the Costumers’, nine cutters, pattern-makers and dressmakers are busy crafting outfits for King’s Landing, home of the southern Lannisters. These will be shipped to Spain, where the current ruler on the Iron Throne, Cersei Lannister (played by Lena Headey), films her exterior scenes.

The sheer scale of the production, and the attention to detail, is extraordinary. From the outset, when HBO greenlit the show in 2008, the network has been determined to do justice to the vision of George R R Martin, the author upon whose novels the series is based, to reflect his books in all their ambition and complexity, and to create a world that looks authentic ( Westeros is based, loosely, on England in the mid to late 15th century during the Wars of the Roses).

Thus, the kaleidoscope of accoutrements in Game of Thrones’ cavernous prop store: wooden furniture, kitchenware, carts, and, rather shockingly, a cardboard box containing 10 (real) dead rabbits, little paws sticking stiffly from the top, five marked for Spain, five destined for Winterfell, muddy home of the northern Starks (exteriors shot in rural County Down). These jostle for space with an entire shelf of chopped heads (not real), relics of the standout episode from season six, “Battle of the Bastards.”

There are also models of chicken-sized baby dragons, a reminder that the series is only inspired by history, not based on it.

Creating all this requires huge budgets, some $10 million per episode. And huge manpower: at peak production, 120 crew members work on Game of Thrones. Filming takes place on six stages 100,000 sq ft in size. Out at Banbridge, 25 miles away and another shooting base, the show’s engineers damned the River Ban to help construct a 100ft drawbridge. Exterior scenes for the towering defensive barrier that is The Wall (a structure that protects humans from the undead and monstrous strous White Walkers) are shot in Iceland, but for the interior, the productionoduction team built a 250ft-long ice tunnel at a quarry near Larne, Countyunty Antrim.

At the heart of all of this are a group of young actors for r whom Game of Thrones has s been a career-changing experience, not to mention na a lucrative one – six years since nce the show’s launch, the key cast t reportedly earn $1.1 millionn per episode, with that figure possiblyossibly as much as doubling when reruns and syndication are factored ed in.

“This is probably going to be the most important job of my life,” agrees Kit Harington, who was cast straight out of drama school. The 30 year-old Londoner plays Jon Snow, formerly dismissed as the show’s “bastard”. Well, one of them. Now he’s the newly anointed King in the North. It’s a war dividend resulting from the unhappy – and usually brutal – deaths of most of his Stark relatives in the preceding seasons.

“It’s a huge thing and it’s very close to my heart,” he says.

What will he miss when the series finally wraps (most probably in May 2018)?

“As far as the character goes, I’ll miss this,” Harington says, gesturing down at the full battle regalia in which he’s currently dressed: big boots, big cloak, big furs. “The costumes are so incredible, [and so are] the fights I get to do.”

The greatest Jon Snow fight so far, the epic Battle of the Bastards, in which Harington’s character was