After the Long Night between seasons, the nonstop whirl of activity since Tuesday’s big Game of Thrones trailer release is almost too much- but nahhhh it’s just enough. And why stop now? I’m loving it, and the flood of interviews and fun follow-ups forthcoming. There’s more goodness today, freshly rounded up here for your reading enjoyment!
- Entertainment Weekly reports that according to HBO, the Season 8 trailer was viewed a staggering 81 million times total across YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter within its first 24 hours- a record for the network. This beats the previous record, which EW notes naturally was the season 7 trailer.
- As part of the lead-up to the new season, EW also has a spread with a new oral history of the infamous Red Wedding in season 3’s “The Rains of Castamere.” It features interviews with George R.R. Martin, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, director David Nutter and actors Richard Madden, Michelle Fairley and Oona Chaplin. There’s a great gathering of old and new quotes from them all about their experience making the Wedding. Benioff, for example, comments:
“We’re used to, in books and movies when a major character dies, we’re used to a bittersweet final moment. The death speech. You don’t get that here at all. There’s no redemptive moment. There’s just horror and slaughter. You want revenge so quickly for it and you’re not getting it, so you’re deprived of even that satisfaction. It’s just like a kidney punch. That’s the feeling we got in the books and that’s what we’re trying to emulate on screen.”
- The leading ladies of Game of Thrones quiz each other in the newest video from Vogue! For more from the magazine, check out their interview.
