As director Daniel Minahan told Hibberd, “There was a scene where they opened up the stomach of a stag [when the Starks find the direwolves in the reshot version of the first episode]. They did it for real, and it releases this horrible smell. All the actors — the boys — threw up.”
Fellow director and producer Tim Van Patten fleshed out the story alongside Minahan. “That is a fact,” Van Patten agreed. “Instead of using a taxidermy stag and then cutting to show some organ meats, we had an actual dead stag. It was bloated and filled with gas. We did everything in the scene up to opening the stag’s belly. Then we got to that moment when we drive the knife into it. Nobody was expecting this. The entrails fell out, and the odor sent the crew scrambling and vomiting.”
Bryan Cogman, who began his time on Thrones as an assistant to showrunner David Benioff and eventually became an executive producer, described the experience as horrifyingly unforgettable: “I’ve still never smelled anything so terrible, and I wasn’t even anywhere near it. I was across the meadow in a producer’s tent. Just thinking about it, I can smell it right now.” Van Patten backed him up, recalling, “I was sick and gagging and crying laughing.”
