This week’s episode of Game of Thrones was full of controversial and gut-wrenching scenes that garnered some pretty strong responses from viewers. One of the most divisive moments came when Jaime Lannister, played by actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, trekked off to King’s Landing, despite the protests of Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie). Now the episode’s director, David Nutter, is sharing what he had Coster-Waldau say off camera to make the moment as emotional as it ended up being.
In the episode, Jamie finds out that Daenerys Targaryen is sending her army after his sister, Cersei, and he decides he’s going to get a head start to find her in King’s Landing. He tells Brienne, who he just slept with after years of buildup.
When Brienne asks him to stay, he tells her he is “hateful” like his sister and leaves her in tears.
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To get Brienne sobbing, Nutter says that he told Coster-Waldau to deliver his lines and then ad-lib off camera. He had Coster-Waldau tell Christie, “I don’t love you anymore,” and apparently that was what sent her over the edge.
“When I was shooting Gwendoline [Christie]’s close-up, what I asked Nikolaj to do is, I asked him to say—after he finished his dialogue—tell her, ‘I don’t love you anymore,'” he told Collider. “And basically, Brienne is such a sensitive person, as is Gwendoline, that that’s basically the thing that he’s saying…but he’s not saying it too directly.”
Gwendoline later told The Hollywood Reporter, “She decides to give herself that experience. For once, she’s really done something that was all about her, in an area where she has no experience at all. She’s hurt in the worst way possible.”
WATCH: ‘Game of Thrones’ Season 8 Episode 5 Trailer.
