Not convincing the diehards. Fans booed Game of Thrones star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as he and other members of the HBO hit’s cast attempted to justify the divisive final season.
The actor, 48, was met with some critical — and quite vocal — feedback during the show’s Friday, July 19, panel at San Diego Comic-Con. In a video shared by Variety on Twitter, Coster-Waldau received boos from the crowd when he claimed that Jamie Lannister’s conclusion with Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) was “great” and “perfect for that character’s ending.”
“It made sense to me,” he added before fans launched into disagreement. Coster-Waldau took the negative response in stride, laughing as he continued to detail his stance on the matter.
Maisie Williams (Arya Stark), Isaac Hempstead Wright (Bran Stark), John Bradley (Samwell Tarly), Jacob Anderson (Grey Worm), Liam Cunningham (Davos Seaworth) and Conleth Hill (Varys) also spoke on the panel. Creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss as well as Nathalie Emmanuel (Missandei), Iain Glen (Ser Jorah Mormont) and executive producer Miguel Sapochnik were scheduled to appear, but all dropped out ahead of the event, with many blaming scheduling conflicts.
Hill, for his part, attributed the season 8 backlash to an overblown perception of viewers’ displeasure. “We’re very grateful for your fandom over the years and I think this is the reality rather than a media-led hate campaign,” he told the audience.
Meanwhile, Coster-Waldau claimed that fans would not have been satisfied with the final season, regardless of its content. “It comes to an end, it’s gonna piss you off no matter what because it’s the end,” he noted. “If you hated the ending, if you loved the ending, that’s great. Just don’t call people names.”
The Game of Thrones series finale aired in May. Viewers largely slammed the episode and the ones that led up to it, which prompted a petition to remake season 8.
Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark) spoke out about the controversy in May. “So many people worked so, so hard on [the show], and for people to just rubbish it because it’s not what they want to see is just disrespectful,” the Dark Phoenix star, 23, told The New York Times.
Kit Harington (Jon Snow) expressed a similar sentiment. “I think no matter what anyone thinks about this season — and I don’t mean to sound mean about critics here — but whatever critic spends half an hour writing about this season and makes their [negative] judgement on it, in my head they can go f–k themselves,” he said in an April interview with Esquire. “’Cause I know how much work was put into this.”
