Game of Thrones stars say season five 'biggest yet'

Kit Harington (Jon Snow) says the books and the show are "different things already".

Russell Baillie talks to the stars of Game of Thrones in London, ahead of the new season.

"The biggest yet." Spend a day in the company of the Game of Thrones cast and that's a phrase you are going to hear on a half-hourly basis.

For when it comes to discussing the fifth season of what is arguably the biggest, definitely the most ambitious television show in the world, the many folk who have been made stars by their involvement in the epic fantasy sure do like to invoke the superlatives.

No, they can't say much about what actually happens in the forthcoming 10 episodes.

But what they can say is that there is, it appears, more of everything.

Like more HBO money to spend on episodes which now cost at least US$8 million each. That means more money for dragons, battles, and possibly, battles, with dragons.

Says Kit Harington, who plays the ever dutiful Jon Snow: "I did a sequence this season which had three times the amount of CGI and special effects. It took a month to film and it will account for 18 minutes.

"It was bigger on budget and scale than the whole of episode nine last year and it's 18 minutes. And there were lots of sequences like that from across the whole story."

There are yet more locations - to depict the region of Dorne, Spain has been added to the European locations GoT has shot in - though most of the filming is done at permanent studios in Belfast.

There are quite a few new cast members, many out to avenge the deaths of season four's dearly departed.

And speaking to some of the cast, you get the sense there is also something else more - anxiety.

A feeling they may have survived this far but with the series now increasingly parting company with author George R.R. Martin's five books so far, their characters' futures are unwritten.

Game of Thrones features on the cover of this week's TimeOut:

The producers of Game of Thrones do love to terminate characters just when fans are getting attached to them.

Says John Bradley-West, who plays the lovable, lovelorn Samwell Tarly: "We know how ruthless Game of Thrones can be. We start to look at quite innocent things with a certain paranoia: 'Hmm. I seem to be getting taken out to dinner a lot. It was only three times in season four. It's six already in season five'."

For Alfie Allen, who plays Reek, the tortured hostage-servant of the sadistic Ramsay Snow, how long he has left on the show has never been far from his mind.

"Yeah I am worried about whether I am going to live or not because I have a mortgage to pay," he laughs. "I am definitely hanging in there by just by a thread."

Veteran Scottish actor Iain Glen, who plays Ser Jorah Mormont, the exiled former adviser to leading throne candidate Daenerys Targaryen, is pleased he's made it this far.

"Like the others, at the end of last season I wasn't entirely sure I would be back. It was lovely to find out ... well, I'm here, so I guess I am."

Glen considers GoT5 isn't just getting bigger, it's getting faster.

"It's really building to a head now. It's got an incredible momentum. Things are really beginning to collide and accelerate."

Gregarious Irish actor Liam Cunningham, who plays Davos Seaworth, supporter of Iron Throne contender Stannis Baratheon, says the new season is a "remarkable shift". He, for one, is happy that the show is overtaking Martin's stories which in the past gave readers an inkling of what might happen next.

"These smug f***ers who know what is coming, ... they are now going to have to concentrate real hard, which is kind of cool."

Harington isn't worried that the foundation of Martin's books is slipping away. He trusts showrunners David Benioff and Daniel "D.B." Weiss to keep GoT the television phenomenon it has been for four years.

"All I know is I have always felt very comfortable in George's hands and in David and Dan's hands. I am starting to see those as two separate things.

"They both know how the whole thing is going to end. The books may end up as a different thing from the show. The show may end up a different thing to the books.

"They are different things already. David and Dan will handle the rest of the show, however long it goes on for, brilliantly and George will write an epic ending to his saga and they will probably be very similar."

Assuming his character survives, Cunningham is looking forward to the future seasons (HBO has confirmed a sixth and seventh) set in "this bizarre violent, sexy, strange world". A world which this season is, yes, the biggest yet.

"I think Westeros is expanding The map is getting larger."

Which gives Cunningham and his comrades more room to create merry hell. "We've gotta fit a lot of shit in. Gotta lose a lot of heads."

What: Game of Thrones season 5
When and where: Screening on Soho on Mondays at 1pm and 8.30pm. Episodes available on Sky's Neon from 8.30pm Mondays.

- TimeOut