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Nikolaj Coster-Waldau Defends Game of Thrones Writers Over Criticism of Final Season

July 15, 2019 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas
Game of Thrones - The Spoils of War

We all know by now that Game of Thrones had a few stumbles on the road to its final moment, and drew its fair share of criticism. But it’s possible that it got quite a bit more than its fair share, and now Jamie Lannister himself has come to the defense of the showrunners. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau discussed the reaction to the last season during a couple of panels at the fan convention Con of Thrones in Nashville.

Per HuffPost, Coster-Waldau discussed how the criticism went a bit too far, and how the cast handled the public reaction. A couple of highlights, and one of the Q&As, are below:

On the criticism of the show: “Every season has been intense in terms of the attention and discussion, but it was extraordinarily intense for a final season. 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, ‘Fucking 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.”

On people slamming showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss: “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. And also know that they too read the comments. And it is, even though you sit on your own and go, ‘Fucking 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.”