Game Of Thrones’ directors Dan ‘DB’ Weiss and David Benioff laughed off a moment where they put a naked baby on top of an actual block of ice and scared it with the Night King.
In season four of the show, a baby was seen being handed over to White Walkers and the Night King, looking calm as it was carried and laid naked on an altar of ice, in just a tweed blanket.
The clip sees the baby eerily looking calm and serene in the arms of the Game Of Thrones villain, before he’s touched and turned into a walker.
But behind the scenes was a far more terrified child, who was screaming in fear at the creature that was suddenly coddling him.
Speaking at Austin Film Festival this weekend, both DB and David marked it as ‘not their proudest moment’ as the small tot, who was only a few months old, was laid on the freezing plinth in order to get the shot.
‘The first scene that the Night King appears in was directed by the great Michelle MacLaren and was the most frightened I’ve ever been on set,’ David said.
‘Not because of the Night King, but because we had a baby, a real baby, there was like an altar made of ice, and I think it was real ice?’
Confirming it was real, David then explained: ‘It was real ice because fake ice in close-ups just never looks real.’
As the audience bizarrely laughed, he continued: ‘So the altar was actually a hard block of ice and we put a baby on top of this block of ice. A real baby.
‘This baby is lying there like “what the f***?” Then a monster, deformed, walks up and puts his clawed finger on this poor baby’s face and the baby starts screaming.
‘I’m like “we’re f***ing traumatising this poor kid”.’
Dan added: ‘It was not our proudest moment.’
A recording of the panel, which has since been put online, also tapes Dan cracking jokes about the time a mother became uncomfortable when she overheard him planning numerous shots of her baby son’s penis.
‘It was very important for the story, because the boy children got given [to the White Walkers] and that the girls stayed,’ Dan explained. ‘So it was important that you saw this was a boy child, and I remember sitting there talking to the director, oh we were the directors of that actually weren’t we?’
After another bout of laughter from the audience, he said: ‘We were speaking going, “no, we need to see the baby’s penis. We need to see the baby’s penis”.
‘I was saying the words “baby’s penis” over and over again and I looked to my right and the baby’s mother was standing there, as she would be if there’s a baby on set.’
‘We had needed to reshoot that scene and do some pick-ups for that scene and the baby’s mother opted out,’ he added.
‘She didn’t feel comfortable about the director making loud, overt references to her baby’s penis in front of 25 people.’
Those poor, terrified kids!
The rare panel appearance also saw both Dan and David confess to ‘making a mistake in everything they did’ with the show, adding that they didn’t have the experience to take on a series of this scale when they got it.
Game Of Thrones streams on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV.
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