October 2017: The Table Read

When Kit Harington entered the conference room, he had no idea what to expect.

The final season’s scripts had been emailed just a couple of days earlier, sending the Game of Thrones cast into a reading frenzy. Like millions of fans around the world, the actors had been waiting nearly a decade to learn their characters’ fates. The entire six-episode season arrived at once, protected by layers of password security.

Sophie Turner flew through her copies in record time, quickly messaging the producers her reaction. “It was completely overwhelming,” says the actress, who plays Sansa Stark. “Afterwards I felt numb, and I had to take a walk for hours.” Others, like Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen), first had to hurry home to get some privacy. “I turned to my best mate and was like, ‘Oh my God! I gotta go! I gotta go!’” she recalls. “And I completely flipped out.” She then settled in for a reading session with a cup of tea. “Genuinely the effect it had on me was profound,” Clarke adds. “That sounds insanely pretentious, but I’m an actor, so I’m allowed one pretentious adjective per season.” Peter Dinklage, meanwhile, broke his years-long habit of checking immediately to see if Tyrion Lannister survives. “This was the first time ever that I didn’t skip to the end,” he says.

Even showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss were uncharacteristically anxious, wondering how the actors would react to the climactic twists. “We knew exactly when our script coordinator sent them out, we knew what minute they sent them, and then you’re just waiting for the emails,” Benioff said.

The cast then journeyed to Belfast to gather in a production office for the formal read-through. By then, everybody knew the tale that was about to unfold, with two notable exceptions: Davos Seaworth actor Liam Cunningham (“The f—ing scripts wouldn’t open, the double extra security!” he grouses) and Harington, who outright refused to read anything in advance.

“I walked in saying, ‘Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know,’” Harington says. “What’s the point of reading it to myself in my own head when I can listen to people do it and find out with my friends?” So, yes: Jon Snow, quite literally, knew nothing.

“Game of Thrones” and “Solo: A Star Wars Story” star Emilia Clarke will be on the jury of the Official Competition of the 62nd BFI London Film Festival, which runs Oct. 10-21. Another “Thrones” star, Natalie Dormer, is on the fest’s First Feature Competition jury, which hands out the Sutherland Award.

Joining Clarke on the Official Competition judging panel are “Mamma Mia” star Dominic Cooper and actress Andrea Riseborough, whose credits include “Birdman” and “Black Mirror.” Also on the jury are Daily Mail journalist Baz Bamigboye; Cairo Cannon, the producer of Carol Morley’s “Out of Blue,” screening as a Special Presentation in the festival; and Gonzalo Maza, the producer and screenwriter of Oscar-winner “A Fantastic Woman.” Director Lenny Abrahamson, Oscar nominated for “Room,” is the jury president, as previously announced.

Dormer, whose recent credits include “Picnic at Hanging Rock,” is joined on the First Feature Competition jury by jury president Francis Lee, director-writer of the BAFTA-nominated “God’s Own Country”; production designer Maria Djurkovic, who was Oscar-nominated for “The Imitation Game”; Will Poulter, whose recent credits include “Maze Runner: The Death Cure” and “The Little Stranger”; Rotterdam Film Festival programmer Inge De Leeuw; and rapper, comedian, actor, screenwriter and radio presenter Ben Bailey Smith, a.k.a. Doc Brow.

For nearly a decade, Emilia Clarke has ruled the ratings as Daenerys Targaryen on HBO’s Game of Thrones. With the series slated to end next year, the 31-year-old actress has set her sights on new challenges. First up: conquering the Star Wars universe in this month’s Solo.

On a rainy April afternoon, Emilia Clarke enters the bright, airy Egyptian galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art the way so many movie-lovers before her have: quoting Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally. Adopting the unsourceable accent Crystal uses opposite Meg Ryan in a famously improvised scene filmed in this very room, Clarke starts stuttering, “Pah-pah-paprikash.” Our amused if bewildered guide, too young to get the reference, adds the 1989 rom-com to her list of movie recommendations from Clarke, who has already gushed about the 2017 religious drama Novitiate. Chuckling over this unlikely double feature, Clarke assures her, “You have two incredible movies coming your way.”

One reference the guide does get: Game of Thrones, the HBO juggernaut which stars Clarke as its most unstoppable heroine, Daenerys Targaryen. In fact, the very tour we’re taking, put together by a company called Museum Hack, is based on the series, and offers a fan-friendly survey of the sometimes inscrutable displays of the Met. You don’t have to be an art historian (our guide is an aspiring actress) to understand what Greek fire, Damascus blades, heraldry, mutilated men, samurai kamon, the dragon-born St. Margaret of Antioch, and an early female pharaoh have to do with wildfire, Valyrian steel, house words, and Clarke’s world-famous alter ego.

And yet, despite her fame, Clarke has managed to spend a full half-hour in the museum sponging up our guide’s trivia without being spotted. For years, Clarke’s brown hair let her hide in plain sight, but she recently bleached it an icy Targaryen blond. So, why the invisibility? Maybe it’s her height. “We both have a thing about our stature not quite being what people expect,” says her co-star Kit Harington, who, at five feet eight, has six inches on Clarke. Maybe it’s her outfit—the gray overcoat, cream sweater, and jeans are a far cry from the cloaks and armor of Thrones. Or maybe it’s her bright, decidedly non-intimidating personality. “When I’m goofing around with my pals, I’m unrecognizable,” she says. Harington calls Clarke’s humor “naughty,” and it’s certainly true that her informal, expletive-laced banter is a far cry from Daenerys’s imperious tones. “Sometimes, if I’m in a really bad mood,” Clarke notes, “people are like, ‘Khaleesi!’ ”

The production team behind HBO’s blockbuster “Game of Thrones” will be given the BAFTA Special Award at this year’s British Academy Television Craft Awards.

Hannah Murray and John Bradley from the hit series will collect the award on behalf of the team. BAFTA said the accolade is recognition of the boundaries that have been pushed across all areas of production in the making of the fantasy epic.

Filming is underway on the eighth and final six-episode season of “Game of Thrones,” which will air in 2019. HBO is working on several potential spinoffs.

The award also recognizes the support that “Game of Thrones” has provided for high-end TV production in the U.K., BAFTA said. The show has filmed across various locations in Northern Ireland and set up a production headquarters at Titanic Studios in Belfast, the Northern Irish capital, which has been a base for the series since the pilot.

Speaking on behalf of the production team, executive producers D.B. Weiss and David Benioff said in a statement: “Many, many people work insanely hard to create any film or television show. They are creators every bit as much as actors, writers, producers or directors, and deserve to be recognized as such.”

“The craft behind what is one of the most popular dramas of our time is nothing short of incredible, from the breath-taking location shots to the intricately designed costumes and set pieces, and not forgetting the level of detail from the makeup and prosthetics team, to name a few,” added Krishnendu Majumdar, chair of BAFTA’s television committee. “Huge congratulations to everyone involved.”

The BAFTA Craft Awards take place on April 22 in London. They will be live streamed on YouTube and Twitter. [Source]

It’s official: The Time’s Up initiative is gaining global traction—and there’s receipts to back it up.

On Sunday, ahead of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards, 190 women working in the entertainment industry in the U.K. signed their names to an open letter announcing their intention to support and continue the Time’s Up movement that began across the pond.

“In autumn of last year, when stories came out in the press about sexual harassment, discrimination and abuse in the entertainment industry, 700,000 female farm workers wrote to us to say they stood with us in solidarity,” the letter, which was published in The Guardian, reads. “Their letter explained that they knew what we were going through, that they stood shoulder to shoulder with us in our pain and in our belief that a better world was possible. This solidarity between women — activists and survivors — across all industries is what inspired Time’s Up and what continues to galvanize us.”

The letter added that the movement is bigger than just the entertainment industry, and is instead intersectional, reaching people “across race, class, community, ability and work environment, to talk about the imbalance of power.”

“Here in the UK, this movement is at a critical juncture,” the letter read, further explaining that the gender pay gap there for young women in their 20s is “now five times greater than it was six years ago. Research in the UK has found that more than half of all women said they have experienced sexual harassment at work.” The letter noted that women working as freelancers or contractors are particularly vulnerable to harassment and abuse.

“There is no question that Time’s Up should be and will be a global movement,” it continued. “A movement that is defined and led by those affected by the problem, not by those in power.”

The letter was signed by Emma Watson, Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Emilia Clarke, and more.