Remember the good ol’ days? When there was a new season of Game of Thrones on the horizon and you would frantically search every corner of the internet to find out any tidbit you could about what was next? You wanted to know it all: Who was going to die? Who was going to betray an ally? Which character was gonna get a hilariously accurate one-liner? For the love of all that is holy, who is going to be naked?! Well, the hit’s co-creators were on to us, and they went to extreme lengths to hide spoilers even while flying on airplanes, and admitted “we thought we were paranoid.”
What Did Game Of Thrones' Co-Creators Say About Hiding Spoilers While Flying?
Say what you will about the divisive final season of Game of Thrones (which you can revisit with a Max subscription), but please don’t try to pretend that you didn’t spend basically all of the fantasy series’ run obsessed with every little detail about it. From the magnificent Game of Thrones cast to how co-creators D.B. Weiss and David Benioff tried not to get “bogged down” in public opinion while working on it, you know you still love it and can’t stop talking about it, even five years after the series finale.
So, it makes complete sense that Benioff and Weiss would have been very careful about spoilers while crafting the Emmy-winning drama. When they recently sat down with ReelBlend hosts Sean O'Connell and Jake Hamilton at South by Southwest to talk about their new sci-fi show (with screenwriter Alexander Woo) for those with a Netflix subscription, 3 Body Problem, they opened up about how working on GOT while flying got kinda tricky. Benioff said:
So the last time we went to Austin together, on the flight back, we've always been slightly paranoid about people looking over at your computer screen and seeing what you're working on. The last time, do you remember this? The last time we went to Austin? We were working on Thrones – the seventh season, or the eighth season or whatever it was – and Dan was typing. And then a week or two later, this guy is on a podcast and he is like, ‘So I was sitting behind D.B. Weiss on a plane. I happened to see what he was writing!’ [laughs]. It was a comedian or someone who was here for South by. And he went on a podcast and was like, ‘I saw the words. And the words I saw were…’ And so I was like, ‘Wow. We thought we were paranoid. We weren’t paranoid enough.’
Egad! It would definitely take some time to get used to people looking over your shoulder and reading/watching your screen to get the goods on what’s coming up next on the megahit you created, right? Weiss continued, noting that he did find a funny workaround:
After that, like, you have to watch cuts of a show on the plane. And I literally had to finish a cut of the show between taking off and landing. Because we were just, we were behind. But I'm in the middle… it was like a paranoid thriller. I'm like in the middle of this plane cabin wondering, ‘The overwhelming likelihood is that nobody gave a shit.’ But like, you didn't know for sure. So I took the flight blanket and I put it over my body . I don't know what people thought I was doing. Actually, I was gonna say, I don't know what they thought I was watching. I'm pretty sure I know.
Yeah, so Weiss was able to get his work done after burying himself and his laptop underneath the flight blanket, but, there were likely a lot of his fellow passengers who thought he’d decided to enjoy some, shall we say, adult entertainment while in the air. And, it sounds like that’s just fine with him, because at least he was able to catch up by the time he landed! You can watch the full video, below:
Their new book to screen adaptation sees the duo reunite with GOT star Liam Cunningham, and they previously talked about the “pressure” of both being a new creator and returning to the small screen with another project, when everyone will wonder, “Well, do they still have it?” Luckily, O'Connell’s early reaction to 3 Body Problem, said they do, indeed, “still have it,” and they were able to help bring another intriguing series to viewers…without accidentally spoiling it for anyone.
