One of the most nerve-racking moments of the most recent episode of Game of Thrones was off book.
We think that the majority of people will agree that Monday night’s episode of Game of Thrones was spectacular. We rank it up there with the best episodes of the TV show so far, alongside Hardhome, Blackwater and The Rains of Castamere.
As ever, there are spoilers beyond this point.
The producers didn’t disappoint with the battle scene in the penultimate episode as we finally got to see the Battle of the Bastards, but arguably one of the best scenes of the episode wasn’t even in the original script.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, the director of the scene Miguel Sapochnik, revealed that the moment Jon Snow was nearly smothered on the ground by his own men was a last minute addition to the episode.
Sapochnik explained:
“The producers asked me to ballpark the number of days I thought it was going to take to shoot it.
“After a few hours and a fair bit of guesswork we said 28. They said we had 12.”
The episode was eventually granted a 25-day filming window for the battle as well as the final confrontation between Jon Snow and Ramsey within Winterfell itself.
But as filming continued, it became clear that even this wouldn’t be quite long enough, the planned sequence would have taken too long so Sapochnik contacted writers David Benioff and Dan Weiss to discuss an alternative.
They agreed to go off script and trusted Sapochnik to make some changes to the shooting.
“I think that this section of the fight – in which Jon is almost buried alive by a stampede of panicking wildings – turned out as one of my favourite little moments in the sequence.
“No VFX, no fighting, just Kit [Harington, who plays Jon Snow] giving a stellar performance and a crazy top shot as he pushes his way back out (we affectionately called it the “rebirthing” shot),” said Sapochnik.
There you have it, one of the most famous moments of the episode, nearly wasn’t in it.
