Game of Thrones director Jeremy Podeswa talks about the season finale and the revelation of Jon Snow's past

Game of Thrones season 7 finale dropped the bomb that we were waiting for since the beginning of the show. And what a revelation it was. Jon Snow’s lineage was confirmed and his true name was revealed, along with a controversial scene involving Jon and Dany in a boat. A lot happened in the season finale and we’ve got a lot of thoughts, but we’ll let the makers take the wheel and tell us exactly what went down in this much eventful episode.

Director Jeremy Podeswa who was behind the camera for the masterpiece that was the season 7 finale ‘The Dragon and the Wolf’, talked about the major parts of the episode and their impact, during an interview with the New York Times.

When asked what it was like to film Littlefinger’s death, Jeremy said,“Aidan Gillen is such a great actor, and it was so nice to have an opportunity to work with him, even if it’s his last scene, because he had a tone that he’d never had before on the show. We see him for the first time truly desperate, fighting for his life, seeing the tables turned on him in a way that is so unexpected and epic. And Aidan just blew my mind, he was so moving”

“I actually was crying! On this show, all the characters can die at any time, but it’s how they go out that is such a big thing, and for him, it was great that he had this amazing scene to go out with.”

Discussing Rhaegar and Lyanna’s wedding scene and Jon’s past, he said,“It was important to me to make that scene idyllic, because it’s so completely against the accepted mythology about what that was, that Lyanna was kidnapped. The new information here is that this was really a relationship in which they were in love with each other. And they were married, but that’s been hidden from the history, until now”

“We were really hoping to have a nice sunny day in Belfast, which is rare at that time of year, but we did have one. That was the main thing, in terms of the performances and how it was shot, that it be romantic without being overly romantic.”

When asked about how it was to film the scene between Cersei and Tyrion, Jeremy said, “That was one of my favorite scenes of the entire show. My favorite scene to watch, my favorite scene to shoot. It was very important to us that we let the audience believe, for at least a moment, that she could really kill him. That this might be it. The first time Peter rehearsed it, I was like, I believed it. [Laughs] That was definitely one of those scenes where I had a chill.”

He then talked about Cersei’s intentions and how well actress Lena Headey portrayed it. “That’s one of the great things about Lena [Headey.] She is one of those actresses who, within her stillness, there is everything. She can do so little, and still have all that complexity. Particularly during the summit at the Dragonpit, she’s able to convey so much without outwardly showing very much. It’s all in there. It’s all in the eyes. And the slight little things she does are incredibly telling. She is a very intuitive and very transparent actress.”

Discussing how tricky it was to film the scene about the Wall breaking, Jeremy said, “Everything was tricky about that one. That was one of the more complicated visual effects that I’ve ever done. It was a huge amount of conceptualizing, just to figure out how the scenes should track, and then the execution was very complicated. We had to decide how much of it was going to be real, and how much of it was going to be visual effects. The top of the Wall is a set in Belfast, and the rest is all in virtual land, and it’s a complicated thing to marry all these things together.”

About how the Wights might actually have a mind of their own and are not completely boneheaded in terms of being controlled by the White Walkers, he said, “Yes. Exactly. That was an important thing for me, too, that you feel like there’s kind of a consciousness there. And I think there certainly is a sense that for an enemy to be a proper enemy, they have to have a certain kind of intelligence. That makes it a real fight, as opposed to a fight with something that doesn’t have the wherewithal to be a proper opponent.”

What were your thoughts on the amazing season finale? Tell us in the comments below!

 

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