Few shows generate the sort of fan fervor of HBO’s Game of Thrones, and the premium cable network made the most of that with one of the most anticipated events of this year’s Comic-Con, the” Game of Thrones” panel on Friday afternoon.

Early in the session, HBO announced nine new cast members who would be joining the show in season five, including “Pirates of the Caribbean"’s Jonathan Pryce and “Whale Rider"’s Keshia Castle-Hughes. Pryce will be playing “High Sparrow,” the chief priest in King’s Landing, and Castle-Hughes will be playing Obara Sand, the eldest bastard daughter of the late Prince Oberyn Martell (Pedro Pascal), also known as one of the Sand Snakes. The other two Sand Snakes, Nymeria and Tyene, will be played by Jessica Henwick and Rosabell Laurenti Sellers. All three are considered lethal in their own ways.

Other cast additions include Alexander Siddig (“Da Vinci’s Demons,” “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”) as Prince Doran Martell, Oberyn’s elder brother and the ruling lord of Dorne. Dorne is one of the seven kingdoms of the fictional realm of Westeros, and it will figure more greatly in the story in season five.

Toby Sebastian will play Trystane Martell, son of Doran, who is engaged to Myrcella Baratheon, played by another new cast member Nell Tiger Free. DeObia Oparei will play Areo Hotah, captain of Doran Martell’s guard

Much of next season’s action also will take place South of Westeros in Mereen, where Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) is biding her time with her dragons. Enzo Cilenti will play Yezzan, an extremely wealthy slave trader before Queen Daenerys outlawed the slave trade.

HBO also released an exclusive blooper reel for fans at the panel’s start, as well as a video of all the new cast additions (above.)

Fans camped out overnight outside of Hall H at the San Diego Convention Center to gain entrance to the panel, which was ably moderated by Craig Ferguson, himself clearly a fan of the show.

The panel was populated by the show’s two executive producers, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, as well as author George R. R. Martin. Both producers and author fielded several questions about the difference between the books and the show, and both parties were clear that while the show is an adaptation of the novels – and often a close one – both can each be enjoyed on their own.

Martin also said that he has enjoyed the changes that Benioff and Weiss have made to his story – such as the duel to the death fought by The Hound (Rory McCann) and Brienne of Tarth, (Gwendolyn Christie), which did not exist in the book.

“The things I mourn are the scenes that didn’t make it,” Martin said. “I always wish we had three more episodes per season, even though that would have killed David and Dan. That would give us parity with other HBO shows, and enable us to include stuff that gets cut.”

That said, Benioff and Weiss reiterated that they aren’t physically able to produce more than 10 episodes per season, due to the difficulties of shooting multiple episodes simultaneously in several countries.

“As soon post-production ends on one season, we start pre-production on the next,” said Benioff. “There’s no downtime.”

Besides Benioff, Weiss and Martin, the panel also included John Bradley (Sam Tarly), Rose Leslie (Ygritte), Kit Harrington (Jon Snow), Maisie Williams (Arya Stark), Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark), Natalie Dormer (Margaery Tyrell), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister), Pedro Pascal (Oberyn Martell), McCann and Christie. The cast is huge so many were not in attendance, but most notably none of the cast’s previous Emmy nominees, Lena Headey and Emilia Clarke, nor its Emmy winner, Peter Dinklage attended this year.

Image of Leslie and Bradley courtesy of Paige Albiniak.

Tags:


  Save as PDF