VERY INTERESTING NUMBER 139: GAME OF THRONES

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GAME OF THRONES

Over the course of eight seasons, Game of Thrones broke many records, created a few controversies, and gave us 73 ambitious episodes of television. And, of course, it made us all want a dragon of our own.

The series wrapped up with its final season in 2019, but there’s more Thrones TV on the way. While we wait for George R. R. Martin’s prequel House of Dragons to hit HBO, here are 70 facts about Game of Thrones to tide you over. Valar morghulis.

1. THERE’S AN UNAIRED GAME OF THRONES PILOT.

The first pilot, directed by Spotlight writer-director Tom McCarthy, was so terrible it had to be shelved and reshot. “We got everything wrong on a very basic level with the writing of it,” show co-creator David Benioff told Variety. One of the biggest problems? None of the friends he and Weiss invited to watch the pilot “realized that Jaime and Cersei were brother and sister, which is a major, major plot point that we had somehow failed to establish.” In 2019, a copy of that original script was unearthed, which revealed a number of interesting details.

2. CATELYN STARK AND DAENERYS TARGARYEN WERE ORIGINALLY PLAYED BY OTHER ACTORS.

In the original pilot, Catelyn Stark and Daenerys Targaryen were played by Jennifer Ehle and Tamzin Merchant, respectively; by the time the show aired, they had been replaced by Michelle Fairley and Emilia Clarke.

3. THE STARK KIDS WERE DIFFERENT AGES IN THE SHOW THAN IN THE BOOKS.

When the book A Game of Thrones starts off, the Stark children are much younger than their on-screen counterparts. Bran was supposed to be 7, while the actor who played him (Isaac Hempstead Wright) was 12; Arya (played by Maisie Williams) went from 9 to 13, while Sansa (Sophie Turner) went from 11 to 15 and Rickon (Art Parkinson) from 3 to 6. In perhaps the most, ahem, stark difference, if Game of Thrones had stayed completely true to its source material, Robb Stark (Richard Madden) and Jon Snow (Kit Harington) would have been only 15 and 14 years old, respectively.

4. GEORGE R.R. MARTIN HAD A CAMEO IN THE ORIGINAL EPISODE.

George R.R. Martin had a cameo in the original pilot as a guest at Daenerys and Khal Drogo’s wedding. When the role of Daenerys was recast, the scene had to be scrapped. Martin later lobbied for a less-glamorous, but probably more memorable, role: a severed head on a stake. But according to Martin, “Those severed heads are expensive … So unless I provide my own, I don't get to be a severed head!" Benioff and Weiss offered him the opportunity to make a cameo appearance in Season 8, but Martin didn’t have the time because he was working on The Winds of Winter.

5. THERE WERE A BUNCH OF OTHER CASTING CLOSE CALLS ON GAME OF THRONES.

Ehle and Merchant weren’t Game of Thrones’s only could-have-beens. Gillian Anderson turned down an unspecified role on the show, as did The Wire's Dominic West. (Judging by the fact that, per West, the role would have involved shooting “in Reykjavik for six months,” it was probably Mance Rayder, a role that eventually went to Ciarán Hinds.)

The Hunger Games franchise’s Sam Claflin auditioned for Jon Snow and Viserys Targaryen, and Outlander star Sam Heughan auditioned for a variety of roles, including Renly Baratheon and Loras Tyrell, seven times. Mad Men star Jared Harris and Oscar winner Mahershala Ali were also reportedly up for roles on the show.

And as always have a chilled day from the Viking