INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
A still from Game Of Thrones 7
(Image credit: HBO)Kit Harington's Saturday Night Live hosting debut last week included a monologue heavy on Game Of Thrones with one
primary through-line: Harington, who plays Jon Snow, refused to reveal how the show ends
It didn't matter who was asking him, be it co-stars Emilia Clarke (she forgot) and John Bradley (HBO wouldn't show him a full script) or his
wife and former co-star Rose Leslie (who doesn't actually care how it ends - she just wants to know what they'll do for money).He wasn't the
first to joke about it, either
Maisie Williams, who plays Arya Stark, pretended to spoil the series on The Tonight Show as an April Fools' Day joke
She told host Jimmy Fallon, "When I found out that Arya died in the second episode, I was like -"Her hands shot to her mouth and she started
(This is an aside, but it shows what a terrific actor Williams is, and it's worth taking a look.)These bits were riffing on HBO's ironclad
battle against spoilers for its most popular enterprise
While this fight has often bordered on the absurd, it's difficult to deny that the show has been about as leakproof as the Mueller
investigation."It's like protecting your house," showrunner David Benioff, who famously won't reveal secrets of the show to his wife, Amanda
Peet, told Entertainment Weekly
"You make it as hard as possible for burglars in hopes that they look for some other house to burgle, but it's impossible to ever completely
secure your house."Security is so tight that the show long ago stopped using paper scripts, which can be easily leaked
Instead, as Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who portrays Jaime Lannister, told a reporter at Cannes, "They're very, very strict
It's reached a crazy level this year
We actually get the scripts, and then when we've shot the scene - and we only have it digitally - and then when you've done the scene, it
It's like Mission: Impossible
'This will self-destruct.' "Sophie Turner, who plays Sansa Stark, offered DigitalSpy a bit more insight on these
"We would have it on an app," she said
"We would get sent sides for the scene (we were shooting) the next day
So we would have to learn it all the day before
And once you've read it, it disappears 24 hours later, and you can never access it again
It's tighter than the White House security."That's only the tip of the iceberg of HBO's deception tactics, however.Turner added that anyone
visiting a set "had stickers on their phones so that they couldn't take photos," and actors and characters had code names on call sheets "so
that no one knew who was really going to be on set." The season was also filmed under the fake title Face of Angels," she said.HBO
programming chief Casey Bloys even said the showrunners were filming multiple endings to the show."I know in Game Of Thrones, the ending,
they're going to shoot multiple versions so that nobody really know what happens," Bloys told The Morning Call
"You have to do that on a long show
Because when you're shooting something, people know
So they're going to shoot multiple versions so that there's no real definitive answer until the end."But Williams shot the idea down,
telling late-night host Jimmy Kimmel in 2018, "Well, I heard this, and I immediately thought, 'I don't think we've got the budget to shoot
lots of different endings.' "Perhaps the most outlandish steps taken to keeping the show's plot a secret came during the filming of Season 7
when the showrunners reportedly did actually create some decoy scenes (though they probably didn't film them)."We did fake some scenes,"
Harington said on Kimmel's show in 2017
"We put together people in situations where we knew the paparazzi was around so they'd take photos, and that would get on the internet to
fake scenes."While filming Season 6, they also once brought Sibel Kekilli back on set, dressed as her deceased character Shae, to fool those
speculating about which characters might rise from the dead
(It worked.)It might sound absurd, but as showrunner Dan Weiss told Entertainment Weekly, "One guy hiked 18 hours on foot in the middle of
Spain's La Mancha desert to take pictures
Another guy in Northern Ireland crawled through the mud and did his own little private commando mission."Much of the cast feels
similarly."You think about all the work you do," Aidan Gillen, who plays Littlefinger, told Entertainment Weekly
"I'd never say anything to anybody - even my closest family members
I take security very seriously
Maybe that's just the Littlefinger in me."Their caution is not unfounded
Four men were arrested in India after allegedly leaking an episode of the show and demanding a ransom of about $6 million in bitcoin to
prevent them from releasing others.(c) 2019, The Washington Post(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by
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