Power resides where men believe it resides.
I will hurt you for this.
The day will come when you think you're safe and happy...
and your joy will turn to ashes in your mouth.
Transcript by n17t01, bellows and honeybunny Sync by n17t01 and honeybunny www.addic7ed.com
It's about power.
This world has gotten very dangerous.
No one is safe.
Killing you would send your brother a message...
Grenade!
It's massive.
We will take back what was stolen from me!
It takes you by surprise.
You win or you die.
It's war.
I think from the first time Dan and I read
George Martin's books we knew he had taken fantasy to a
different place that never'd been before,
into a more realistic place...
The characters don't feel like they're in... they're locked
in the eternal struggle of good and evil.
They feel like real people wrapped into live in a world that's not our world,
the world where magic still exists.
It's a much more adult, grounded and psychologically complex,
it probably has more in common with many other HBO shows
than The Sopranos and Deadwood.
I think it's more reality-based than fantasy, personally.
And maybe I'm a little bit biased 'cause I sometimes see, uh...
people of my size, how they are represented in fantasies,
they're comical and... I feel like there's some sort of
code-book that they have to follow in fantasy.
With our show, that line is very unclear.
It would be good to have you in the field.
Competition has become a little stale.
I don't fight in tournaments.
But that's why when I fight a man for real
I don't want them to know what I can do.
My character is a Lannister. And the Lannister family
is the most powerful, the strongest family in all the kingdoms.
They come from amazing privilege.
It's sort of "mess them up a little bit" in terms of how they should be treated.
Starks are one of the oldest families in Westeros and they have a
very strong code. They take a lot of proud in being Northerners.
South is the place you'd really rather live. It's Southern California opposed to Alaska
and for the Starks their motto is "Winter Is Coming".
Metaphorical in the sense that things are always gonna get worse.
A guardsman just rode in from the hills.
They've captured a deserter from the Night's Watch.
They've maintained power in the North for thousands of years
and they really have the respect of the people they lead,
and part of that means if someone needs to be executed for instance,
you don't have an executioner do it,
you do it yourself because that's the Stark way.
Don't look away.
You did well.
Jon is not exactly a Stark. He is a Snow, he's called a bastard name.
But he is of the North and his father is Ned Stark so he's half a Stark.
Bastards get the names derived on where they are from.
So if you a Northern bastard, you're a Snow.
If you're born in The Riverlands and you're a bastard
you're a Rivers and so forth and so on.
On one side you have the not-trained maternal family
that you see in a lot of the family characters but at the same time
the politics of being royal as well,
it's kind of really, really fascinating.
Soon you will cross the Narrow Sea
and take back your father's throne.
The people drink secret toast to your health.
They cry out for their true king.
She's an exiled princess on the run because
her father was used out from the throne.
As she is with her older brother, Viserys,
and he is fearlessly ambitious and he's been planning his return to be king.
Vengeance is obviously another driving motivation.
This is a ruthless world, this is a world where people
are constantly killing each other and often they do so to avenge a
prior crime and of course the cycle of avenge is
you kill somebody that just means that now you are the target for
the next person in the avenge cycle so
vengeance drives a number of different narrowed threats.
In my dreams I kill him every night.
Robert Baratheon came to power as a warrior.
This is someone who won the throne through violence
and the attempted rebellions will be dealt with the show of real force.
He has two brothers, one is Renly Baratheon who is the younger brother,
he's never fought in anything. His other brother Stannis on the other hand,
Stannis is a proving commander, problem with Stannis is nobody likes him.
- Stannis is your older brother. - We both know what Stannis is.
He inspires no love or loyalty.
Very well written characters, it's the core of the show.
Everyone can relate to someone.
Who but you can protect the kingdom?
It covers all bases, I think that's why people get so passionate about it.
They can loose themselves in these characters and in their stories.
Some people hold a grudge, some people don't.
I'll try to keep you alive for her sake.
The tension is always so high,
and then you can decide for yourself as an audience member
who you believe should have the power.
The first book was written 20 years ago and there's still so much
that seems to apply to what's going on today.
When you are writing about people struggling for power,
that's so much of what drives the world.
When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die.
It's been interesting working on the first season
and seeing the response to it and seeing people try to apply
things that they saw on Game Of Thrones to real world events.
You have the same power corrupts and I think that's very true.
There was a raven from King's Landing.
Jon Arryn is dead.
The King's most important adviser is called The Hand of the King
and the former Hand has died under mysterious circumstances,
so King Robert travels north to ask his most trusted friend
to come back to the capital with him
and serve as his chief adviser, as his Hand.
Lord Eddard Stark, I will name you the Hand of the king.
One of the primary conflicts in the show is when Ned is called south
and given no choice, to help out his best and oldest friend in the world.
They were raised together, they learnt how to fight together,
Robert just looks on Ned as a true brother.
I mean, Robert has two brothers that he doesn't like or trust.
But there's no one else out there that Robert could give
that much faith and confidence in, it had to be Ned Stark.
We were meant to rule together.
Ned doesn't want to do it. He hates politics, doesn't want
any part of that, he's a guy who's spent most of his life fighting in wars
and now he really wants to spend the rest of his life with his family
in relative quiet.
I belong here with you, not down south in that rats nest they call a capital.
His wife reminds him the last Hand might have been murdered
and he's putting himself into a very dangerous situation.
He ends up going south with his two daughters and
nothing is ever the same after that.
Ned is a very good man, he's the one we're rooting for
and that's because he is noble, he believes in doing the right thing.
There's grace on a serving in the Night's Watch.
The Starks have manned the Wall for thousands of years.
You may not have my name, but you have my blood.
The Night's Watch is a band of men, who have been guarding the south
from what lies beyond the wall for millennia
and what lies beyond the wall in this day and age is thought to be wildings,
and probably not a huge thread,
but we know there to be other things that may be rising.
I am ready to swear your oath.
Do you understand what you'd be giving up?
The vow for the Night's Watch is you forsake having children,
you forsake having a wife, you forsake anything that was from your old life.
You give your life to protecting the realms.
Welcome.
And Tyrion says to Jon that he's an outsider as well, they're both outsiders,
and you have to arm yourself with what
your code'd be, a bastard or dwarf or little man,
and then it can never be used to hurt you.
Why do you read so much?
My brother has a sword and I have my mind,
and a mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone.
Tyrion is someone who's always had an affinity for other outcasts,
he'd grow up a dwarf in a society where if you were born a peasant,
and you're a dwarf, your father would have carried you out into wilderness
and left you there for the wolves.
Luckily he was born into a very wealthy family.
This is about family and what family means and
how loyalties and how love for those around you
can make them do things which they wouldn't necessarily do otherwise.
You're not thinking of taking the black.
What? And go celibate?
Cersei just wants him dead, she loathes Tyrion.
Wouldn't get underneath her skins, very easily,
because we know each other's secrets and know each other's desires
and know how to exploit that into our advantage.
He's not afraid of his sister.
Almost everyone in the kingdom is afraid of Cersei,
but Tyrion is not and he's known about her affair with Jamie for a very long time.
He fell in love with the wrong woman in so many ways,
in this case he fell in love with his sister.
Targaryens wed brothers and sisters for 300 years to keep the blood line's pure.
Dany has only known what her brother has told her.
She is incredibly submissive and she is completely dominated by her older brother.
She's a princess but she's also her brother's pawn in being sold
into marriage to someone she perceives as a terrifying barbarian
from an alien culture.
You see how long his hair is?
When Dothraki are defeated in combat, they cut off their braids
so the whole world can see their shame.
Khal Drogo has never been defeated.
She's been married off to Khal Drogo, a horse lord of the Dothraki,
and this marriage is purely for Viserys political convenience,
he wants to go back home and conquer Westeros.
The problem is he doesn't have an army.
And the easiest way for him to get an army
is to get one by marrying off his sister to a Dothraki horse lord,
who has a horde of 40,000 tough fighters.
So the deal that Viserys thinks he strikes is
"You get to marry my sister and then you'll come with me and we'll fight my enemies
and conquer Westeros."
The wedding day is not how you'd hope
your wedding day would go.
A Dothraki wedding wedding without three deaths
is considered a dull affair.
He's an incredibly aggressive warrior.
And he doesn't speak her language.
So first and foremost, there's a language barrier there.
This is her new society and she's initially repelled by that.
But as she starts to travel with them and ride with them
and spend more time with them, she actually comes to actually admire them,
and have a great deal of respect for their culture.
It kinda turns from being a horrific arranged violent marriage to
a beautiful love story and they're kind of perfect for each other,
So it turns into something quite gorgeous.
You're not supposed to be here.
No!
They come into our home and try to murder my brother...
Do you know whose dagger this is?
I do. Tyrion Lannister, the Imp.
The strongest characters in the story are female
and I like to think of the dual between the two mothers
in the competing families, Catelyn Stark and Cersei Lannister.
They seem diametrically opposed in many other ways, but
they're both women that are driven
to very extreme actions
to protect their children.
This man came into my house
and there conspired to murder my son.
I call upon you to seize him.
The wonderful thing for me is that it's got some strong women in it,
which is wonderful as a young girl to be playing
such a strong female role.
I've heard the show be referred to as feminist.
We have characters such as Cersei the Queen,
Daenerys, the exiled princess, who find their strength
through being wronged.
And then some of the possibly strongest characters
and the most brutal in a lot of ways.
The next time
you raise a hand to me,
will be the last time you have hands.
This is the first time that she starts to take matters
into her own hands and she starts to kinda see who she could become.
She sees something in Khal Drogo
that gives her the courage to make the best of this situation.
A Targaryen of the head of a Dothraki army!
The Narrow Sea lies between us.
Ned is a very straightforward person
and finds himself dealing with backstabbers and double-dealers.
No matter how effective he is at being Ned Stark
he's really not very well equipped to handle them.
We've come to a dangerous place.
We must protect ourselves.
Look after one another.
Ultimately, those qualities that we consider positive qualities
become liabilities for him.
- I'm looking for my brother. - You kill me,
your brother is a dead man.
He loves Tyrion.
And I think that it's mutual.
They're both Lannisters and they like to play with people's ideas of them.
Have you ever heard the phrase
"Rich as a Lannister"?
Of course you have,
You're a smart man.
I was falsely accused of attempted murder.
They kept me at the Eyrie, in a sky cell and
and the fourth wall of the cell is basically a cliff...
The show is often about the misuse and abuse of power
and what happens when people end up with
a power that they're not really fit to wield and what can go wrong...
Bend the knee and swear loyalty to my son.
Robert Baratheon dies and his young unfit son sits on the throne.
- Bring me his head. - No!
You hear this kind of whispers as you start to make the show
"Are you really gonna kill your lead in the first season?"
And we were nervous about that scene and also couldn't be more excited
because it's really the emotional climax of the season.
Ned's death becomes the occasion
for the struggle to return freedom to the North.
That's only the tip of the iceberg.
Jon has a huge dilemma
when he hears what's going on south of the wall, that his brother is rallying to the war.
You took the oath, you can't leave.
He didn't expect his family to be wronged in such a way.
I think it takes huge courage for him to forsake them really
and to stick with what his task is.
It's a big decision and that creates who he is going to be in season 2.
The world becomes a much more dangerous place.
An open war started to break out between Robb and the South.
They're all in danger, always.
The world is gotten darker, is gotten more violent.
None of our characters are in safe places anymore.
It certainly makes the actors read their scripts quicker,
knowing that anyone could die at any point.
It just keeps you guessing and it keeps you on your toes.
You never know which family you're gonna be rooting for.
There's such a wide variety of fans out there.
It doesn't just appeal, I think, to one demographic.
What I always wanted is for the show to not disappoint them.
And Dany is such a character that people
either love or hate, but it's always been positive.
Luckily, I had no one who said "You were rubbish", which is always good.
Everyone's just being wonderful.
The final image seems to be the one that people kind of speak about most.
People go, "Yeah, I saw that."
I had to guy buy all the books.
It's cool. It's amazing.
I remember having a conversation with an HBO executive and saying
"You know, this isn't the kind of show that gets nominated for fans cause
they don't like fantasy shows, factually just doesn't happen."
And Dan, my partner said, "We just got nominated
for an Emmy" and it was just... it was pretty surreal and it was great
to see Peter get nominated and so many other people that worked so hard on the show.
I remember exactly when they called out Peter's name.
I was definitely shout out, I was so happy
for him, I was so happy for the show.
The Golden Globes is a slightly different event,
because there's wine and champagne on the table, but...
when he won, that was also an amazing experience for everybody.
I mean recognition is really great.
You pretend to be cynical about it, but it's great
when something that you love and respect and love being a part of
turns into a hit or popular.
Um, it's a really great feeling.
To have that recognized,
so early on, it's glorious, it's incredible.
The world just got a lot bigger.
By season 2, we're already at war.
So there's no more peace. Basically, everywhere you go,
this world got very very dangerous. There are more characters and
things just got a lot more brutal.
We do have a clash of kings, of several kings and
we have a lot of people who believe they are the rightful king.
Many of the characters that were together
and in one another's presence in season 1 have been
dispersed to the four winds in season 2
who is definitely bigger in scope of the field.
The locations we were at were so stunning that
they kinda look CGIs.
We went there to not CGI things and
I think that makes the show what it is.
Everything's done in a very real way.
The ability to go to places like Malta or Croatia or Iceland to shoot
affords us an opportunity to hit the kind of a realistic note that
is never possible no matter how brilliant the sets are.
That affects the actors too. It puts us there.
When you're in a cave up in the mountains and you're there and
you see your own breath, you don't have to CGI breath.
You're cold, so you don't have to act cold.
So it does a lot of the work for you.
We've been able to do it the way we want to.
We've been able to go to all these far found locations with an incredible cast.
I mean, the books have such a huge ensemble of characters.
And so many of those roles are really vital.
It's not like if it is a one-man show with a bunch of side characters.
There are really 20 characters in the show
who all are often the leaders in their particular scenes.
We've got some new characters, who are fascinating and wonderful
and bring new dimensions and textures and
and bring out new things in the characters that we already know and love.
And again more brilliant women, more brilliant, strong, feisty, wonderful women
who just gonna dominate.
The time to strike is now.
The Stark fight the Lannisters, Baratheons fight each other.
All of our characters are increasingly dangerous circumstances
and even the characters that you might think of as villains
in their minds, they are actually doing the right thing.
It's not all black and white with Jaime.
He's got the twists and surprises.
Do you think that you can't beat dragons,
but actually the reality of that is that
they are stuck in a wasteland,
and whilst having dragons is kind of the biggest miracle this world has seen,
it's not gonna put a roof over their heads or food on the table.
And so that's kind of the first struggle that you see they're doing.
What you can expect from this season is more bloodshed,
there's more epic sword fighting,
It doesn't hold back any punches.
You're gonna be left on a knife edge again and again.
Not to give too much away, but the fans who want
blood and battle won't be disappointed in season 2.
The cold winds are rising.
The war of five kings, they're calling it.
Nothing matters but how it ends.
I heard some of the men talking about the comet.
That comet means one thing, boy. Dragons.
Power is a curious thing.
It's a trick,
a shadow on the wall.
This is what ruling is.
Lying on a bed of weeds, ripping them out before they strangle you in your sleep.
The king's a lost cause.
It's the rest of us I am worried about now.
You have inherited your father's responsabilities.
- They come at a cost. - I love her.
- I saw it. - Whatever it was, you'll see it again.
When my dragons are grown, we will burn cities to the ground.
Transcript by n17t01, bellows and honeybunny Sync by n17t01 and honeybunny www.addic7ed.com