To the anon who send me the messages, thanks for the heads up regarding the podcast. Slightly busy with work, but I did have a listen.
https://www.crowdcast.io/e/james-hibberd-fire
Listened to parts of it. A lot of it amounted to D&D writing for a TV show and adjustments having to be made for a TV show. Pretty much all their decisions were based on making it easier for a TV production rather than based on characters and plot.
Interviewer asks how HBO trusted Benioff and Weiss so much with the show. And Hibberd talks about how HBO liked D and D’s ideas and take on how to do things compared to the department head experts in production and cinematography with their conventional approaches. And hence trusted that the Ds knew creatively what to do.
So basically a lot of the fault lies with HBO heads who placed more importance on production and cinematography than the Ds story telling abilities despite there being no other writers.
Q: How did the Ds convince GRRM that they knew what they were doing?
A: I think George had been pitched by a lot of people who were familiar with his books but did not really know them front to back like he would want somebody to. They talked a lot about the books themselves and showed in that lunch meeting that they had a deep knowledge about what’s going on.
Considering that I can see none of this deep knowledge of the books on the show, I really don’t know how George did during their lunch meeting.
Q: One of the chapters that is interesting in the book is the sort of split that happens on the show from season 5 – the divorce chapter – if you could talk about that?
A: It served as an amicable divorce – the forks in the road. It’s based off quote from David Benioff who basically said that whenever there is a fork in the road between the books and the show and we have to chose between sticking with what’s in the books vs what’s better for the show and we are always going to chose what’s better for the show.
It’s interesting because a lot of it’s based on an assumption. George assumed that the producers would spend just as long adapting AFfC and ADwF as they had on the previous books. Because the fourth and fifth books are huge books. But in those books, he introduced all these new characters and storylines that he finds very integral to the story. But for David and Dan they had already reached a point in season 5 where they had 8 major storylines, thirty series regulars, and were having to bench characters like Bran and the Hound for seasons and even their major actors being paid quite a bit of money had only a few minutes of screentime. So basically they sort of reached the limit for a tv production in terms of what you can do. And so they really had to figure out how to keep the show going and how to end mainly using the pieces they had on the board. So even if the books were out the show would have taken a different path, but also the books were not out. George gave them the rough draft idea of what he was planning but ultimately they had to figure what makes sense best for the show.
The funny thing in this part is the showrunners thinking that Bran and the Hound have the same level of character importance. The guy who ends up on the Iron Throne and the Hound have the same importance. That’s how low down the scale of importance Bran Stark was to Benioff and Weiss - and he’s probably GRRM’s central character.
Q: To touch on the ending though, are you able to share with us how much of the show’s ending rang true with what GRRM had planned. At least in terms of character endings, like Sansa?
A: I mean, not really. There are 3 major things, the fabled 3 things that George told them that ended up on the show – that is Stannis burning his daughter, the fate of Hodor and the origin of his name, and also as George put it – who ends up on the Iron throne which the showrunner put it as – something that happens at the very end. So presumably that means that Bran stark also ends up on the Iron throne. But I am only kind of phrasing it weird because I am being very exact just in case everyone’s being very tricky. So as a reporter we are always looking for weasel words that could mean two different things. But presumably that’s what he meant.
But George has said that there will be major differences between the books and the show. And then of course people will have the reactions to that and the debate will start all over again.
Q: I am sure every single thing is fixated on what will happen to Daenerys at the end of the books.
A: Like yeah, that’s a big question though isn’t it, yeah.
So basically this confirms that the 3 things that will happen on both the show and the books are Stannis and Shireen, Hodor and Bran on the Iron Throne. Every thing else is most probably different in the books.
Q: What did you think of the liberties taken with the plot in the show when compared to the book source material?
A: You know, it’s like when I hear reasons for doing it I always understood the reasons. D and D are hyper-logical people and they are always looking it from a production stand point and I have a chapter in there that is devoted to Sansa Stark’s wedding night and the fallout from that. Which is obviously a short moment but I thought it important to spend an entire chapter on that – it’s the most controversial scene in the show and it lead to a broader discussion about sexual assault on TV shows that I thought was very important.
And so it’s interesting because George very firmly states – My Littlefinger would have never done that, he would have never turned over Sansa Stark to Ramsay and he makes a good case for why LF wouldn’t have done that, but the showrunners go look, look in the books, the person who marries Ramsay is this very little known character and we wanted to give that role to one of our major actors and our LF is not the same and he does things differently.
Once again it’s confirmed that the only reason Sansa went North in the books is because the showrunners wanted one of their major actors to have that role.
Q: Which cut book character do you miss regardless of how small and insignificant they would be?
A: Even ones like Arianne Martell – they kind of made Ellaria Sand into that character. A lot of the characters they cut ended up kind of becoming other characters. So it’s interesting to try to think of it in your head well it’s this one but they kind of used that for this other character. The obvious answer is Lady Stoneheart – because that’s the big thing they left off. We don’t know the rest of that story yet. We have had only two chapters. There is going to be a lot of things when the books end where when you finally see the full picture that you can judge whether the character should have been in there or not been in there.
Q: And we hopefully don’t have to wait too long to read that.
A: Yeah, no, he’s making – from what he told me – great progress during the pandemic on the books. I would not be at all surprised if the book came out next year. I would never make a prediction but it would not surprise me at all if it came out next year.
So yeah. Nothing really new here that’s not been discussed before. We can only wait on the books to find out where these characters end up and how they end up there. It’s all up to George now. If TWoW does come out next year, we may at least get a hint of where the characters and their journeys are going.
