‘Game Of Thrones’ Season 7: Cast Freezing In Iceland, Ian McShane Tells Off Fans
Warning: This article may contain Game of Thrones Season 7 spoilers.
Game of Thrones actors have been suffering for their art while filming Season 7 in Iceland the last few weeks, according to a report by Page Six.
Apparently, GoT stars Kit Harington (Jon Snow), Liam Cunningham (Davos Seaworth), Joe Dempsie (Gendry), Rory McCann (Sandor), and Kristofer Hivju (Tormund Giantsbane) have been enduring brutal conditions to film scenes for the upcoming season in the frigid northern country, with winds gusting at 100 mph and wind chill temperatures plummeting to minus 13 Fahrenheit.
“Daylight is scarce here [five to six hours a day]. Super jeeps are needed to bring in equipment, and much is then transported by hand,” said a source close to the production. “The actors are made up and dressed in hotels and driven to location 90 percent ready to shoot.?.?. Shelter is provided by ‘Russian tents’ that are anchored down, and able to be heated, and [can] withstand 100 mph winds.”
The conditions are so bad that recording dialogue has become nearly impossible.
“High winds caused words to be ‘whipped away’ — shouting became the norm. And despite the cold, there was an issue with a lack of snow in the lowland locations.”
And if Game of Thrones Season 7 actors are hoping to make new friends while in Iceland, it’s proving difficult, as the barren landscape keeps them isolated.
“There are small hotels in the remote areas, and often the only guests are the shoot crew,” explained the source.
It is believed the Game of Thrones Season 7 cast and crew are in Iceland filming a sequence where the Night’s Watch travel north of the Wall for a mission. And while winter conditions are brutal to film in, chilly weather was exactly what showrunners Daniel Weiss and David Benioff were hoping for when they delayed the filming of Season 7.
“We’re starting a bit later because at the end of this season, ‘Winter is here’ and that means that sunny weather doesn’t really serve our purposes any more,” the pair said during a UFC Unfiltered podcast last July. “So we kind of pushed everything down the line, so we could get some grim grey weather even in the sunnier places that we shoot.”
While Weiss and Benioff’s reasoning is sound, it should be noted that they aren’t the ones being forced to perform in subzero temperatures!
In other Game of Thrones news, actor Ian McShane made some waves this week when he told GoT fans that they took the show a bit too seriously.
According to Digital Spy, the actor — who played Sandor’s mentor, Brother Ray, in the Season 6 episode “The Broken Man” — had some harsh words for overenthusiastic viewers in an interview with Empire magazine.
“The show is huge, but some fans seem to identify with it [too closely],” McShane said. “You want to say, ‘Have you thought about your lifestyle? Maybe you should get out a little more’.”
Game of Thrones fans may remember that McShane ran afoul of some viewers in March 2016 when he let it slip that Sandor wasn’t really dead during an interview on the British morning talk show BBC Breakfast.
“My character really is like an ex-warrior who’s become a peacenik, so I have a group of peaceful sort of cult who – I bring back a much-loved character who everybody thinks is dead,” he during his appearance.
When some fans later complained about the spoiler online, McShane told the Telegraph that GoT was basically just about “t*ts and dragons.”
Gasp.
And he still wasn’t in an apologetic mood when he recounted the incident to Empire.
“What am I giving away? A character beloved by everybody returns. Get a f**king life.”
Tell us how you really feel, Ian.
Game of Thrones Season 7 returns to HBO this summer.
[Featured Image by HBO]
