The end of an era! Us Weekly caught up the stars of Game of Thrones at the 2018 Emmys and the ceremony’s afterparties on Monday, September 17, to discuss the last season of the hit fantasy series.
“Everybody has done a lot of crying-filming the last season, so we’re all feeling very bittersweet and existential crisis-y, the usual,” Emilia Clarke, known for her role as Daenerys Targaryen, joked to Us and other reporters at HBO’s afterparty.
Peter Dinklage, who plays Tyrion Lannister, shared a similar sentiment in the Emmys press room earlier in the night during his acceptance speech for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series.
“I had my last day on set back in July of this year … and it was very sad. This is not only a great TV show to be a part of, but it was an enormous family to be a part of,” he raved. “I’m sure you’ve heard that before from actors, but in this case, I was far from home. I live in New York and we shot the show over in Europe. Many times I had to stay there and I wasn’t able to go home on the weekends. So I really developed roots in the community of Ireland and in some of the other countries we shot it. So it was really hard to say goodbye, because I wasn’t saying goodbye to just the show. I was saying goodbye to a life over there.”
Issac Hempstead Wright (Bran Stark) and Liam Cunningham (Davos Seaworth) echoed their costars’ sweet remarks while speaking to Us on the golden carpet before heading into the star-studded show.
“I think it’s difficult with a show as massive … as Game of Thrones to make everybody happy with the ending, but in my opinion, and I think the opinion of everybody on the show, we’ve wrapped up in the most satisfactory way,” Wright explained. “It’s bittersweet. There’s lot of layers to the ending.”
Added Cunningham: “It’s been really weird, really emotional. We have been a family. You can see on the screen how tight everybody was and how friendly everybody was. You can’t deliver a show without quality unless everybody’s getting on with everybody … So to say goodbye to something like that is incredibly difficult artistically, but also personally. … People talk about this being an epic story. You have no idea what epic means until you see the next season.”
Game of Thrones, which won Outstanding Drama Series during Monday’s ceremony, will air its eighth and final season in the beginning of 2019.
