Do you remember where you were on Wednesday 9th November 2016? Chances are, you were processing the knowledge that the day before, Donald Trump had just been elected President of the United States.
As it turns, the cast of Game of Thrones were on set when the news broke. And they were filming a scene that must have felt eerily prescient: the scene at the Dragonpit in which Jon Snow gives his speech about lies and honour. You may recall that he was being berated by members of his party for bending the knee to Daenerys. "I cannot pledge myself to two queens," he says, and Cersei proceeds to cooly dismisses him. Jon Snow defensively declares that he won't swear and oath he can't uphold.
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In a illuminating interview with Variety, Liam Cunningham (who plays Ser Davos) takes us straight to the casts' mindset on that fateful day. "The results had just been announced the morning we filmed that particular scene — that particular day of that scene with Mr. Kit Harington. We may have been rehearsing that scene. But that was the first time that Kit Harington had said those words on that platform in that scene." Harington's speech — "When enough people make false promises, words stop meaning anything...lies won't help us in this fight." — definitely feels a subtweet directed at our current POTUS. At the very least, those words must have taken on a deeper significance for the actor, which makes Harington's delivery all the more memorable.
"Was the election something you all were discussing on set?" Variety asked, and Cunningham replies, "was there a person on the planet not discussing that election?" Even in the land of Game of Thrones, we can't avoid the perils of today's political climate. Let's hope that the citizens of Westeros can get it together better than we can.
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