To call Game Of Thrones' final season hated would be an understatement, given the sheer vitriol and rampant backlash. At the center of said hate are showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss, who have since fallen off the face of the Earth. Though they are scheduled to appear at the upcoming Thrones Comic-Con Panel on Friday, Jule 19th, actor Nikolaj Coster Waldau has since spoken up in their defense during an appearance at Con Of Thrones.
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Alongside actors Jerome Flynn, Miltos Yerolemou, and Hannah Murray, Coster Waldau took questions about the series for nearly an hour, and it wasn't long before the elephant in the room was brought up. "Every season has been intense in terms of the attention and discussion, but it was extraordinarily intense for a final season,” explains Coster-Waldau, who turned in a standout performance as Jaime Lannister. “And we have this WhatsApp group, the actors, and I saw some people getting a little upset because some of the stuff is vicious...It’s just fun for you, but of course some got a little upset. There was that kind of weird feeling of, ‘What the hell? We worked so hard. I’m not asking anyone to feel sorry, by the way. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying how it was to get through that whole thing.”
“For anyone to imagine or to think that the two creators of the show are not the most passionate, the greatest, the most invested of all, and to for a second think that they didn’t spend the last 10 years thinking about how they were going to end it is kind of silly,” he said, during an appearance at another panel. “And also know that they too read the comments. And it is, even though you sit on your own and go, ‘Fucking stupid writers. Assholes.’ They really ― like everyone on ‘Game of Thrones,’ every single person and there are thousands ― we worked our asses off to make the best show we could for the ending.”
For more from Nikolaj, be sure to check out the full panel video below. Are you feeling salty about how GoT concluded?