Coster-Waldau Went Off Script Filming GoT Final Season, And It Was Brutal
Home video released of high-profile films and TV series nearly always include all sorts of extras, and one of their typical features is a commentary. Game of Thrones Season 8 was not an exception.
Its DVD/Blu-ray version included both a making-of documentary for the show's finale, titled "Duty is the Death of Love" and an audio commentary track, which involved showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss, as well as Emilia Clarke ( who played Daenerys Targaryen).
And the finale commentary revealed a lot of interesting things, about both the finale and earlier episodes of Season 8.
Remember for example that scene, where Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) ditches Brienne (Gwendoline Christie ), leaving her in tears? While not infamous as Daenerys' decisions and eventual fate, or outcome of the final battle against the Night King, that scene pissed off a lot of fans.
Some just wanted a happy ending for them and hated Jaime relapsing into his unhealthy-in-every-possible-way relationship with Cersei. And others, even those who agreed that leaving Brienne was in-character for Jaime, hated how the event was framed – you did not even need to squint for it to look like as if Jaime ran back to Cersei because Brienne just could not compare in bed.
But whatever were the faults of the script, the actors, in particular Coster-Waldau, tried their best to deliver proper emotional displays during that scene.
In the above-mentioned commentary, the showrunners mentioned that to help in provoking genuine-looking grief from Christie, Coster-Waldau said to her a brutal line, quite in Jaime Lannister's style, that wasn't present in the script, and was later cut from the final version of the scene: "I don't love you. No one loves you."
As to what extent his character could have meant that is debatable – at that point Jaime is clearly attempting to cut ties with Brienne, so that she wouldn't try to follow him on his doomed course. But what is clear from this little incident is the serious effort that the cast of Game of Thrones was making to connect with their characters.
Perhaps that sort of effort is what might separate a popular but controversial show, like later GoT seasons, from a plainly bad one.