“Winter Is Coming sent me to the Game of Thrones Premiere”, A Fan’s Story

Season 4’s premiere was everything we at the site had expected it to be. Whispers of tapped beer yet unreleased to the public were flowing, cast members (those who weren’t even officially on the “list”) were showing, and in one corner of this collected chaos stood a representative from among you, a reader of this site.

We were very happy to send a member of this community with such a passionate drive for all things Ice and Fire to this year’s premiere, so please join us in welcoming DarthRachel as she shares with us her story.

As a fan of Game of Thrones, I’ve been pretty lucky. I live in NY, and I’ve had the opportunity to enjoy many of the promotional events that HBO has organized over the last few years. HBO’s enthusiasm for the fans has allowed a pretty amazing Game of Thrones community to exist in this city. There are tons of “unofficial” meetups, trivia competitions, reading groups, potlucks, viewing parties, but the HBO events are always special. We’ve enjoyed the Exhibition, the Throne tour, DVD release events — It’s endless and it’s awesome.

Up until now the extent of my “fan experience” at an event like the Season 4 premiere would have been limited to penguin-huddling by a police barricade trying to take crappy long distance phone pictures of arriving cast. Which, incidentally, is what all my friends were doing that night. But I wasn’t. Instead, Winter Is Coming sent me into the Press Tent to speak with the cast on the red carpet!

I admit to riding the subway to Lincoln Center with a giant smile on my face. Fellow passengers probably thought I was disturbed. Upon arriving, I headed to the Press Line for the tent. I was ecstatic about the tent because it was freezing! I expected that these embittered reporter types and harried PAs would be mean or dismissive to me, but everyone was really nice. I was taken to my assigned spot on the red carpet and given a “cheat sheet” with all the attendees head shots, names and roles listed. This was the first time I’d gotten any confirmation of exactly who would be walking the carpet that evening. Ten minutes before it happened.

The area was crowded. There was a guy with a camera rig to my left, and some entertainment blogs to my right, but everyone was in good spirits, happy to be in non-freezing temperatures! We were informed that upon arrival they would attempt to have some of the actors START at our end of the line, and that cheered me up because I was having visions of an empty carpet for 2 hours. (After 40 camera interviews the actors tend to drop out, leaving those of us waiting at the end with voice recorders pretty lonely. I did not get to speak to many of the cast and creators because of this.)

After lots of waiting, jumping up and down to get warm (it was still pretty cold but not nearly as cold as outside) the actors started to arrive. Most everyone was familiar with Winter Is Coming. Liam Cunningham said “I have you favorited on my computer!” Finn Jones, of course, greeted me with a big “ROCK ON GUYS, WINTER IS COMING”. Gwendoline Christie grabbed my hands and insisted I pass on to the site and the readers a huge “Thank you sooo much! Everyone!” for supporting her. George R. R. Martin wanted to make sure everyone he knew from the site was doing OK. “HellooOOO” he said to both Phil and Zack, editors past and present.

It was a completely surreal experience! The tent was loud and crowded. Camera lights were flashing everywhere, and you could hear 15 different conversations at one time (half of which were sing-songy host voices imploring unseen viewers to stay tuned). Before the premiere, I was scared that I would get nervous and blank out or have a fangirl moment but honestly, it was so hectic and I had so little time to speak with everyone that I just did not have time to feel nervous. Though I did sneak in a few fan questions.

When I heard Liam Cunningham tell another reporter that he thought the final King of Westeros would probably be a White Walker, I asked him if that was his REAL answer. He said, “Of COURSE. I see Stannis as the rightful King. Joffrey has no blood claim, Robert was lousy and Renly declared war on us! Stannis is the man. Stan the Man!”

I snagged Ramin Djawadi’s handler when I saw him coming towards me, and asked her to make sure he stopped to talk. When he arrived, I told him I only had one question and it came straight from a friend who HAD to know — “Can we look forward to any songs about very tall people?” Ramin responded, “I can’t talk about any of that,” and then smiled.

Finn is always a great sport, so I figured I could ask him something silly.

Loras is basically the biggest bad ass in Westeros.

To this Finn said, “Riiight! Tell me about it!”

…Do you have any endgame skills for the White Walker apocalypse?

At this point Finn took a wider stance on the carpet and started gesturing wildly, “OK. I’d ride into battle on a unicorn with a huge horn. I would possess the power to chop off zombie heads with my sword and flowers would flow out of their severed heads. When flowers touch a zombie they turn good.”

Finn, you’re not getting rid of the zombies?

“I’m curing them! It’s zombie disinfectant! That’s a great answer!”

So get on that guys. I promised him someone would illustrate it.

I asked Dean-Charles Chapman how many selfies he managed to take of himself on the Iron Throne, and he said “I think at least three.” Our talk tended towards some spoilers, but I can confirm to you that he thinks a pillow on the Iron Throne would be a fantastic addition.

I geeked out with Mark Stanley about Coriolanus, “I think I had about nine parts in that play. Nine characters, 4 accents.” He was definitely the MVP of that cast and he said, not unlovingly, that, “With Grenn you’re lucky if you get a few grunts out of him, going back to Shakespeare and getting the muscularity of that text again was wonderful.”

I joked with Sibel Kekilli about wardobe. “Is Shae going to get a new dress?” to which she laughingly replied, “She’s a poor girl now. Tyrion can try to give her jewelry but, honestly, I love that dress.”

I touched on Tormund Giantsbane with Kristofer Hivju who told me that “From 1 to 10 Tormund is an 8.75. The rest is Love,” when I asked him just how angry we can expect Tormund to be with Jon Snow. As a parting of ways I asked him if he was OK with the term “Wildling” and he answered, “I prefer Free Folk.” Take that people at my weekly Trivia contest. TAKE THAT.

At this point I was feeling great. I was talking to people and getting good quotes. I spoke with Hannah Murray about how much she loves Gilly, “…going to see her actually happy this season! But of course, it can never last for long. But she doesn’t feel sorry for herself and that’s what I like about her.” Hannah is luminous and approachable and all I can think in my head is I JUST watched her on Skins last night, and how I wish I could harness 1/10th of her lipstick game.

But then something happened. Emilia Clarke was suddenly there. The press line was jostling. Everyone was calling, “Emilia! Emilia!” She smiled and stopped to talk with a reporter two spots down from me. But just behind her.. was that…? IT WAS. I flagged down one of the red carpet organizers, “Do you want Emilia?” “No. If you can, please tell him I’d like to talk to him next?” and I pointed at Michael McElhatton. I was afraid with all the clamor for Emilia that Michael would pass me by and go on into the screening.

That’s right. I passed on speaking with the Mother of Dragons so I could ask the Hero of the Red Wedding a few questions. Questions like, “I need advice on staying creepy and crafty like Roose. Got any?” “Oh yes, never, never let your guard down.” and a smile. “Love at your peril.” Speaking of Love, I couldn’t resist asking him a question about Walda. “He likes her. She’s made him a wealthy man and you know, I wouldn’t be kicking her out of bed just yet.” After that we talked about how it was a travesty that there wasn’t more Bolton merch in the HBO store and he told me to wait until next season!

Sorry Emilia. Pink is my color.

From then I scored again, and got to talk to Pedro Pascal (which meant I missed out on speaking with Rose Leslie and Lena Headey. Devastation.) and can confirm that he has a completely arresting gaze. I have no idea what he said to me. Even when I re-listen to the recording of our conversation, all I can think of are his eyes. I blibbered something about how much the fans are looking forward to finally seeing House Martell and he said, “House Martell is kind of like the punk rock region of Westeros. We do things differently there. We’re a more sensual people. Oberyn encompasses a rebel’s heart. King’s Landing is very structured and you maneuver with fear. Oberyn has no fear.” And then I probably looked into his eyes for several more seconds without saying anything. Whoops.

After Pedro it was Gwendoline Christie. Yes. She is tall. Yes. She is beautiful. Yes. She is an uplifting burst of personality and grace. I am instantly in love with her. After she ran up to me with her messages of thanks for Winter Is Coming as a whole, we geeked out over the new armor and swords.

“I love that the costumes are incredibly realistic and very beautiful.” she says. “The way that Michele Clapton designed Brienne’s armor, she marks Brienne out by creating something that is not immediately identifiable as male or female. CC Smith, my sword master, said ‘Yea. You’ve got it.’ when I first put that armor on. Sometimes, I’m very lucky to be on set earlier than other people and I can go into the armory on the lot and see the work in progress. The work is so skillful and dedicated and beautiful and every single detail is real!”

Then I might have brought up a certain sword and asked if she could talk about it to which she yelled “NOOOOOO!” I had to try, though!

My final interviews of the night were Kristian Nairn and Isaac Hempstead-Wright. These two were the last in the tent. Reporters at the front of the line had left. People were streaming out and these two made sure that everyone who was left got to talk to them. They are the best.

I think I may have given Kristian an ethical quandary when we started talking about Bran’s warging. I don’t think what he does to Hodor is very fair or ethical. Kristian told me I was holding Bran to real life senses of ethics that didn’t apply to Westeros, but then he said, “But Hodor doesn’t really like it, does he? Oh! You’ve given me a a crisis! I was fine with it!”

Isaac was wearing my favorite outfit of the night, I even took pictures of his shoes. I asked him if he would like to have Bran’s powers in real life, “HELL YES!” even if that meant taking on the negatives of those powers, “Yea, ya know it’s not all bad, right? That’s not so bad?” he said. I can’t spoil anything for the unsullied but our conversation then got crazy and long and involved lots of jumping around and waving our hands and talking about a Tower in the South of Westeros.

That happened.

Then it was over. The camera crews had packed up, Isaac was talking to one last blogger, and we were being directed towards the exits. The screening of Season 4’s first episode had already begun inside, but I didn’t stress about missing it, because I was already looking forward to the HBO Ultimate Fan Experience in Brooklyn on Thursday night, where I would also get to see the first episode. Packing up my bags and trailing down the 120 feet of red carpet, I realized I was still freezing, and didn’t care.

Thank you to Winter Is Coming, and to everyone reading this. I pass on Finn’s hi-five to you!

-DarthRachel

• Published on 03/20/2014 at 5:03 PM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 12:43 PM CDT