In an interview published by Entertainment Weekly in 2014, Gwendoline Christie recalled she trained for six weeks for Brienne’s major fight sequence with the Hound (Rory McCann) in the Season 4 finale episode “The Children.” Christie said that the sequence — in which Brienne finally locates Arya Stark with the Hound and unsuccessfully tries to convince Arya that she’s working under her late mother’s orders — took three days to film and called it one of the most difficult things she’s done in her life.
“We were fighting up hills, down hills, rolling, fighting on rock face with a sheer down drop,” Christie told EW. “Rory McCann is an amazing actor and a very strong man, and that was a challenge — not just as actors, but as characters. It’s a … really intense challenge.”
“Game of Thrones” fans will recall the fight sequence as one of the show’s most intense one-on-one fights up to that point. The scene alone is nearly four minutes long and ends with Brienne knocking the Hound off a considerable rock face. Arya leaves the Hound to die at the episode’s end, leading many fans to initially suspect that he dies before Season 5’s start.
The fight sequence helped the “Game of Thrones” Season 4 finale receive considerable acclaim; TVLine named McCann and Christie its performers of the week for their efforts in the episode. After the episode aired, McCann told HBO.com that he still thought he and Christie could perform the entire fight sequence again in 20 minutes. “We play pool together sometimes and I can imagine having the full-on fight with pool sticks for a laugh,” McCann said.
