Hey, remember that time that one of the most successful TV shows on the planet spent some of its hard-earned hype and money on a Facebook Live video of a piece of ice slowly melting? And then, so many people tuned in to literally watch the ice melt, that the ice-melting video broke? And then it was all just for a release date that could have been handed out in a press release, sans flamethrowers and internet problems, and ice? Pretty goofy, right?
Game Of Thrones’ producers agree, per a new interview with The Daily Beast, in which series star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau recounts showrunners Dan Weiss and David Benioff’s reactions to HBO’s recent Facebook Live event for the show:
I spoke to Dan [Weiss] and David [Benioff] about that and they were like, “Oh god… That’s embarrassing.” Everyone was like, “What’s going to happen?” “What’s going to happen?!” “It’s melting!” “It crashed!” “Oh my god!” It’s like, just walk away… just walk away. It’s just a date! You know, I was actually thinking, “Is there going to be a backlash and people will think, ‘Fuck you guys for that!’”
But Coster-Waldau—who also gives some good insight into the future directions he sees for troubled swordsman Jaime Lannister—then fell back on that old Lannister confidence once again, noting, ”But that’s really happened with every time the show kills off a major character: ‘Never again! Fuck you! I’m never going to watch this show!’ and, you know, they keep coming back.” And, yeah, we probably will, when Game Of Thrones returns for its seventh season on July 16.