Game of Thrones star defends writers after final season backlash
Game of Thrones star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau defended the showrunners of the HBO fantasy hit during a fan event this weekend.
The Jaime Lannister actor addressed complaints about the show’s eighth and final season at Con of Thrones in Nashville on Saturday. Some fans online have taken to slamming Emmy-winning writer-producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss for the final six episodes, and there have been pointed stunts such as a Change.org petition to try and convince HBO to remake the final season.
“For anyone to imagine or to think that the two creators of the show are not the most passionate, the greatest, the most invested of all, and to for a second think that they didn’t spend the last 10 years thinking about how they were going to end it is kind of silly,” Coster-Waldau said, according to Huffington Post. “And also know that they too read the comments. And it is, even though you sit on your own and go, ‘F–king stupid writers. Assholes.’ They really ― like everyone on Game of Thrones, every single person and there are thousands ― we worked our asses off to make the best show we could for the ending.”
During the Q&A portion, a fan said how much the show meant to him and the actor added, “I just wish Dan and David could be here to hear this, to understand that people really love the show, that suddenly they’re not the most hated people in the world. I mean, because that’s how they might ― I know how they feel.”
The actor also described how the fan reaction impacted the cast, including a discussion in a private WhatsApp chat group.
“Every season has been intense in terms of the attention and discussion, but it was extraordinarily intense for a final season,” Coster-Waldau said. “And we have this WhatsApp group, the actors, and I saw some people getting a little upset because some of the stuff is vicious, and if you make the mistake of start reading all that shit, because if you guys get really angry about something ― I’m sure you did, some of you ― so you write to each other and go, ‘F–king assholes. This is so not what would happen! They ruined, they butchered George’s world!’ It’s just fun for you, but of course some got a little upset … There was that kind of weird feeling of, ‘What the hell? We worked so hard. I’m not asking anyone to feel sorry, by the way. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying how it was to get through that whole thing.”
Coster-Waldau and other members of the cast will be on hand at another fan event this week, the San Diego Comic-Con, where GoT has an official panel on Friday.
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