Ned's death was so pivotal at the end of season one
and everything changed from that point.
And even though there have been many big moments since then,
there's nothing that compares to the Red Wedding.
Everything changes after this point. It's kind of the end of the innocence.
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN: My belief about fiction has always been
that I want to affect my readers emotionally.
Whatever I'm doing, I want them to care about the characters.
And I want them to experience the full range of human emotions that we experience in life.
And I want them to laugh at the funny scenes.
And at the feast scenes, I want their mouth to water when I'm describing all the food.
And if I'm writing a song, I want them to hear the music.
And when there's death, I want them to feel grief.
Fiction should replicate life.
Television and film should replicate life.
If there's going to be a death of an important character,
you should feel it.
And that's what I tried to do with the Red Wedding
and I think that's what David and Dan have done with their version of the Red Wedding.
They certainly did it in the first season with the death of Ned Stark.
I mean, I, of course, knew that was coming
and I watched it like everybody else and there were tears in my eyes
when episode nine of season one was over.
So, that's the way it should be.
When you're reading anything,
when you're watching anything,
the impact of that story is ultimately just a question of how hard it hits you
and I think it's hard for me to remember a scene that hit me harder.
I remember the experience from reading the book
was shock and horror.
But then later, how did I not see that coming?
Because you knew that Robb was heading into a dangerous situation.
But somehow your guard drops
and you realize that Edmure, despite all his fears,
he's not marrying some hideous Frey monster.
He's actually marrying this beautiful young woman
and that turned out really well.
And it looks like, "Hey, this might have a happy ending."
And, of course, it all starts to change when you hear The Rains of Castamere playing
and you think, "That's not right. (LAUGHS) That's something odd there."
So what we're hoping for with this scene
is something similar where things seem to be going so well
and then it all takes a very dark turn.
Part of my desire as a writer, part of a thing I always strive for in my books
is not to be predictable.
What's going to happen in the setup I have is Ned gets killed, which is a shock in itself.
Ned gets killed, the predictable thing is, his eldest son, the young hero,
is going to replace him and is going to avenge him.
So I wanted to, in my evil sense, to set up the reader for that
and then to frustrate their expectations
'cause life doesn't work out that way, you know?
You don't always get to avenge your father's killer.
Sometimes you get killed too and the whole situation becomes worse.
So I knew that even before I finished the first book.
I knew, ultimately, that the Red Wedding would be coming.
Which didn't make it any easier to write because by the time I wrote it
I'd spent six years with these people
and I'd come to love Robb, I'd come to love Catelyn.
Letting go of them was very, very difficult for me.
But, nonetheless, it was always intended.
I remember how it made me feel to read this thing,
(LAUGHS) to have this thing happen in a book I was reading
and not be able to believe what I was reading.
I was completely, completely fooled. Just had no idea what was going to happen.
And then went back and reread and all the clues were there.
So what's really impressive about what George did,
it wasn't just that he wrote something surprising
'cause anyone can surprise you.
You can write that the queen's head explodes and no one's going to see that coming.
But if it's not properly set up, it's just a cheat.
But to surprise someone and then,
despite the fact that you've given them
a chance to figure out what's going to happen,
that takes real skills.
When I wrote Storm of Swords,
the Red Wedding occurs about two thirds of the way through the book
and yet it was the last thing that I wrote.
The whole book was done expect for that chapter.
That was the last brick in the wall.
So, I got to it and I said, "All right, I have to do it now.
"I have to kill Robb and Cat."
It's probably the scene that I'll most be remembered for,
for this entire thing.
And it's a scene that David and Dan have...
One of the scenes, I think, that got them to make this show.
They said to me when we had our first meeting at The Palm,
all those years ago in Los Angeles,
that if we can get to three seasons and do the Red Wedding
then it will all have been worthwhile.
And, so here we are.
And I hope the viewers will forgive us all.
Well, let's get ready.
The wine will flow red
and the music will play loud
and we'll put this mess behind us.
BENIOFF: You've got two audiences for the show,
the people who have read the books already and those who haven't.
And there are millions of people who have read the books
and millions more who haven't.
And the show has got to work for both of them.
I think for the people who have read the books
there's that dread of knowing what's going to happen
and wishing it wasn't going to happen even though you know it's going to happen.
And for people who haven't read the books, with luck it hasn't been spoiled for them yet
and it can be a shock.
The same shock it was for the readers the first time they came to that scene.
But it's got to work for both audiences.
It's got to work for those who know it's coming
and for the larger audience who doesn't know it's coming.
There might be some people who see it coming
'cause people are pretty savvy.
I'd like to think that most people won't see it coming.
BENIOFF: Some of the clues in the book that George was able to put in there
and didn't give things away,
we were worried about giving away.
So, for instance, there's a moment where Walder insists that
Grey Wind, Robb's direwolf, cannot accompany them inside the castle.
Even though it didn't give it away for us the first time we read it,
when as you're rereading it you're thinking, "This is going to be a really tricky scene
"because if Walder is making a big deal
"about the fact that Robb's giant wolf bodyguard can't come with him,
"you're going to start to suspect that something might be up."
So, there are just a number of small changes that we made
to try to hide the ultimate resolution of the episode
from the audience as long as we could.
The Red Wedding was based in part,
of course, on a real incident from history, the Black Dinner, in Scotland.
The king of Scotland was having some difficulty with the Black Douglases,
very powerful lords,
and they had a big dinner and celebrated their friendship.
And then at a certain part some people came in with a covered platter,
inside of which was a black boar's head which was a symbol of death.
And the minute they opened that, the two Douglases knew that they were,
safe conduct or no, they were toast.
And, indeed, they killed the two of them right there at the table.
Now, obviously, I took that, as you do in fantasy,
you take everything, you use the basis of reality but then you make it bigger.
So the Red Wedding is considerably bigger and bloodier than the Black...
Only two people died at the Black Dinner.
But still it's a powerful incident in Scottish history
that provided the inspiration for what I did with the Red Wedding.
The world of the show has definitely announced itself
as a world where these horrible things do happen to good people
and the heroes that you want to see come out on top and triumph
don't always come out on top and triumph.
It's all about the cost of honor and the cost of love in this case.
MARTIN: In the book, Robb has married a woman named Jeyne Westerling
and he does not take her to the Twins.
In the television show, he marries a Volantine woman named Talisa
who is with him at the Red Wedding and who dies with him.
BENIOFF: If we were to follow the books strictly,
Robb would have been off-screen
for much of season two and much of season three.
And we've been looking towards this scene for so long
and realizing that this scene is going to have so much more weight to an audience,
particularly an audience that hasn't read the books,
if they've spent more time with Robb.
One of the more interesting things that happens to Robb in the books
is that he marries this woman he's not supposed to marry
but we almost never see them together.
We wanted to see that couple more. We wanted to get to know them better.
It's all really about our connection to the characters
and the trauma of losing those characters you care about.
It made sense to us that his queen would be by his side
and that when he goes down, she'd go down with him.
The Red Wedding was the hardest thing I ever wrote in my whole career as a writer.
It's a very dark scene. It's a very upsetting scene.
And when I knew we were doing the show and David and Dan talked about it,
one of my worries going in is, "Are they going to soften that scene?"
It's so gut-wrenching. It's so tragic.
It's such a punch in the gut.
Not only did they not soften the scene,
but they did something I would have thought would have been impossible.
They made it darker by killing Talisa,
where in the book Jeyne lives.
George said, "I'm bloodthirsty and you guys are even bloodier than I am."
impressing the master of the body count is hard to do.
But he was taken with that.
They took the darkest thing that I've ever written and made it darker,
which is pretty amazing. (CHUCKLES)
WEISS: We're really pleased with and proud of the way that it turned out.
I think that we succeeded in making the version of it
that we would most want to see and we're really happy with it.
Maybe happy with it is the wrong word to use for this specific scene.
But we are.
I mean, it's a grim and horrible moment
but we want to do it its own grim and horrible justice.
It doesn't end quickly. It's not all over in a hail of crossbow quarrels.
It actually lingers
for what we hope is for an uncomfortably long period of time.
WEISS: I think in that final moment, it's about the tragedy
of a mother's last ditch, completely futile, attempts
to save her son's life.
I don't think she cares about herself at this moment.
She puts herself directly in harm's way.
She does what she does with Walder's wife,
and knowing Walder Frey as she did on some level,
maybe she knew it was a futile move.
Or maybe she didn't in the state she was in.
Michelle in that last scene is just so powerful,
her voice when she's talking to Walder Frey and pleading with him.
WEISS: When she swears that she'll kill Walder's wife
and they kill Robb, she makes good on that promise.
BENIOFF: That last shot of Catelyn standing there,
you're hoping for a cut to black.
You just want it to be over.
You're watching this woman that you care about so much
and in her absolute most horrible possible place,
a mother having seen her own son killed before her eyes.
Catelyn has everything that's ever meant anything taken away from her.
And she knows that when Robb is dead that she's dead too.
She also knows, I guess on some level, Walder Frey's wife is blameless
and on a larger level she doesn't care.
She makes good on the promise she made to Walder Frey
and kills Walder's wife.
And then she waits to die.
There was no image that could feasibly come after
the image of Catelyn dying and dropping out of frame.
We always knew that, that would be the last shot.
And we knew that she would fall beneath the frame
and we'd end on a blank frame.
There's no score we could imagine that would be appropriate for the moment.