‘Game Of Thrones’ Season 5 Finale Postmortem: Director David Nutter Talks Twists

Director David Nutter on the ‘Game of Thrones’ set (Macall B. Polay/HBO)

Director David Nutter went behind the lens for the final episode of “Game of Thrones” Season 5.

(Spoiler Alert! This story contains major plot details from the “Game of Thrones” Season 5 finale – “Mother’s Mercy.”)

When Nutter returned to the “GoT” fold last year (he previously directed The Red Wedding and “Mhysa” in Season 3, and last week’s “The Dance of Dragons”), and got the script for the final episode of Season 5, he had a flood of emotions while reading it, he told Access Hollywood.

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“Every emotion that you can have, I would actually have, of course. And then, of course, the minute I closed the script, the biggest emotion of all — fear — came into play, because it’s basically, you know, I take this stuff so personally and I don’t know how to do it any other way than that,” he said.

Now that “Mother’s Mercy” has aired and fans have seen the episode, “fear” makes complete sense. Nutter had to tackle huge moments including Daenerys Targaryen coming face to face with Dothrakis, Stannis Baratheon losing the war and accepting his death (delivered by Brienne of Tarth), Jaime Lannister finally telling Myrcella he’s her dad (only for her to start to die in his arms), Arya killing one of the men on her hit list, before being poisoned as punishment and going blind, and then, the two biggest sequences in the episode — Cersei Lannister’s (Lena Headey) emotional walk of atonement, and the brutal twist at the end – the death of Jon Snow (Kit Harington).

Nutter directed Headey in the pilot for her former Fox show, “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” and Access Hollywood asked him if their history helped make the hard material the actress had to do in the finale with the walk, any easier.

“The most important thing to really gain with any actor for a director is trust and her knowing that I was there for her every step of the way,” Nutter said. “And she knew that I was there for her and wanted to make this — in some respects — as comfortable as possible, in a very uncomfortable setting and world.

“I was glad I was there to actually allow her to do her thing because she’s such a tremendous actor that my goal is to set up the world for her, to let her do her thing and not get in the middle of it,” Nutter continued. “And when she has that chance and that freedom to do that, she’s quite astounding.”

Hannah Waddingham as Septa Unella, Lena Headey as Cersei Lannister (Macall B. Polay/HBO)

Nutter said he was also very impressed by Headey’s performance in the scene prior to the walk, when Cersei confesses to the High Sparrow (Jonathan Pryce).

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“There’s that sequence [the walk] and then there’s the sequence that kind of leads up to it that — I think it’s the best performance I’ve ever seen her actually — the best scene she’s ever had in the series,” Nutter said.

The director praised “the depths in which she goes into Cersei’s inner soul.”

Beyond the huge moments for Headey (award show voting groups should take note), the episode ended on a crushing note for fans of the heroic Jon Snow, who was stabbed by the men he commanded.

“It’s kind of, in a sense, not unlike a Julius Caesar — the death of Julius Caesar, in a sense of how he was systematically brought into the fore and killed by his own men,” Nutter said.

Kit Harington was a member of the “GoT” cast from the beginning and so the scene was “very emotional to the people that were there shooting it,” Nutter said.

“When scenes such as that happen and you do it the right way — when Catelyn and Robb Stark were killed in the Red Wedding episode, there are multiple tears of course, in front of camera and sadness, but of course, behind the camera as well. People who get to become friends and have tight and strong relationships with these actors are moved by what they’re doing and moved by losing these people as friends and people [that they] have on the series,” he said. “So, it is a kind of situation in which it’s quite a moving experience and one that I feel [is] important to do it in the right way.”

Kit Harington as Jon Snow (Helen Sloan/HBO)

Asked about his conversations with Kit prior to shooting the brutal stabbing of Jon, Nutter said they talked, but his job was really to set things up and let the actor do what he needed to.

“He’s a brilliant young man who has such natural talent and instincts that to me, it’s a situation of [being] there to support him,” the director said. “[It’s] creating an environment that he feels that he can actually, in a sense, discover how best to do what he wanted to do and I would lay it all out to him, we would talk about it, and I’ve been friends with Kit and I’ve loved working with him since Season 2, of course. And I think we enjoy working with each other and we have a great relationship as far as that’s concerned. I felt proud to be there and I think that he was happy that I was there as well. … It turned out just very well and I think that everyone was very satisfied with how it ended.”

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Nutter said the stabbing of Jon Snow was not Kit’s final scene to shoot.

“We shot another sequence with him,” Nutter said, noting Kit’s final scene was one with Jon Snow and Samwell Tarly (John Bradley) from Episode 509.

“And after that of course, we had cake and a farewell. … I got a chance to speak and then of course, Kit got a chance to thank and say goodbye to the cast and crew that he had fallen in love with for the last few years, and it was a really, really wonderful nice moment,” the director said.

For those who may be hoping that Jon Snow’s death isn’t final, especially with the arrival of The Red Priestess, Melisandre, at The Wall, Nutter said that question should go to the show’s executive producers – David Benioff and Dan Weiss.

“That’s more of a probably Dan and David question, but I will say this — that his death is un-refutable and his death is one that is not gonna be easy to – this isn’t like the egg that fell off the wall and cracked himself, this will be a very powerful one. There’ll be no question if he’s dead or not,” Nutter said.

“Game of Thrones” will return to HBO in 2016.

Jolie Lash

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