April sees Game of Thrones season four hit television screens on both sides of the Atlantic. The last few weeks have been filled with various tidbits of information, with teasers, trailers and stills being regularly released. Next week sees the home entertainment release of season three, giving those out there without Sky Atlantic a chance to catch-up and serving as a refresher for those who do. To celebrate the release, THN were invited to an intimate screening of some of the bonus features.
Upon arrival at the event there was an enormous ‘wedding cake’ on display, heavily hinting at the theme for the evening. The cake was made by Choccywoccydodah, the famous baking company that have their own reality television show. It took four members of staff over twenty hours to put it together, with the creation of the cake to be broadcast at some point in Autumn. The thought process behind it was to create a slaughtered wedding cake, all the daggers were created from chocolate, with the rest of the cake being chocolate, rum and raisin. Having been given a slice to take home I can confirm that it tasted as good as it looked. After everyone had had a chance to take in the beauty of the cake we were all ushered into the screening room.
Once inside, we were greeted by HBO marketing director Ian Fullerton who explained that we were going to be a shown a making-of featurette, for episode 9 ‘The Rains Of Castamere’. I won’t spoil anything here for those yet to see it, but those of you reading this that have seen the episode will know how explosive and game changing it is.
We were then joined by little miss Arya Stark aka Maisie Williams, who treated us to a short Q and A. She was asked what it was like to act alongside ‘the hound’ actor, Rory McCann, who is pushing 7ft in the flesh, and she remarked that its no different to everyday life as she has to look up at everyone anyway (Maisie herself is barely 5ft tall). She then went on to tease a darker Arya for the next season, stating that the brief clip of her wielding a sword in the trailer does indeed mean that she will be doing more than a little fighting this time around.
An interesting bit of trivia for you fans out there, in George R. R Martin’s novels Arya Stark is left-handed, Maisie however is right-handed, but has learned how to do everything (including holding a sword) with her left hand so as to be authentic. She admits now that she wishes she hasn’t as it’s a lot harder than she thought.
The actress also talked about the response the episode got on the internet after it aired. She recounted that although she didn’t watch the episode air she knew when it had by her twitter-feed which went into complete meltdown. She also commented on her now viral Vine saying that she wanted to post some sort of reply to the overwhelming response.
After this we were left to enjoy the featurette, which was exceptionally in-depth and featured interviews with cast and crew which included director David Nutter, actors Maisie Williams, David Bradley, Kit Harrington and Rose Leslie as well as members of the art and FX departments. The interview footage was played alongside the episode, and I’ll admit even with the interview footage, it’s a tough episode to re-watch. It has now made me even more anxious to see what the future holds in season four.
Game Of Thrones Season 3 is released on DVD and Blu Ray from Monday 17th February. You can order it here.
