I was more interested in their reactions to the violence than the violence itself. And obviously, there were key moments, one of which we’ve just spoken about, that gear-change into switching from dialogue into action. And of course, just capturing those beautiful performances and that tragic triangle of Abby, Ellie and Joel. And I did plan that [overhead shot with Ellie lying with Joel’s dead body on the floor], pulling up that vacuum of hope at the end.
There are some slight tweaks from how it plays out in the game – like Abby finishing it off by stabbing Joel in the neck with the broken club, rather than beating him. Was that to make it feel more final?
Exactly. Joel has endured this beating, fulfilling the promise from five years ago, it’s got to be slow. But at the end of it we wanted this utter finality of – in terms of creating that response in Ellie – there is no hope. That’s absolute curtains. And that seemed a very effective way of achieving that.
This scene brings to an end that relationship between both characters and actors with Bella and Pedro. How emotional was it on set?
Bella, I know of old. I directed her first-ever scene on Game of Thrones when [she was 11]. So we’ve known each other since she was literally a child. Rekindling that relationship was lovely, and there was an immediate intimacy and connection there with Kaitlyn and Pedro. Particularly in that relationship with Pedro and Bella, I didn’t want to be the gooseberry in the room there. They’ve built that connection over the years that they’ve been working together, and so I would step back from that and not try to insert myself into that.
There’s a particularly affecting moment when Joel’s fingers twitch as he’s in a state of semi-consciousness. Is that actually Pedro lying there?
I’d asked him for that on one of the takes. And then I remember watching and thinking, ‘Oh, God, that’s the desperation of pointless hope’. So, yes, he is doing that. Pedro is a traveller and an explorer as an actor. Each take is an exploration. What nuance can we find here? What is the level of pain here? What is the endurance? What is the level of acceptance of the consequences in your life on every level, from the huge philosophical and moral questions? What is the level of connection and awareness of Ellie’s presence in the room? As an actor and as a director, we’re working together there to try to calibrate that and find an emotional response in ourselves to any given moment.
We’re running out of time, and we haven’t even gotten to the gigantic, peak Game of Thrones-tier battle sequence at the centre of this episode. Can you tell me a bit about the scale and the challenges of shooting that?
It was actually really, really fun. Because, if you imagine, as a director, that you join a production that is like: here’s an incredible stunt team. Here’s an incredible AD team, here’s an incredible VFX team. Everybody’s working their ass off to achieve this incredibly ambitious sequence. And given all those assets, human and otherwise, you’ve got to be an idiot to mess it up at that point. And so it just comes down to working every single moment, from the big plan down to the micro level of, is that makeup right? Is that level of violence right? Is it cold enough?
We just all worked our asses off. And I’d walk away at the end of each day, and it was cold and sometimes it was rainy which was not our friend, but each day I’d be replaying the sequences in my head with a gentle feeling of elation, a bubbling optimism that what we were capturing through this cumulative effort all these extraordinary craftspeople was was something that was going to be really visceral. I’s an extraordinary kind of juxtaposition with the intimacy of those that large sequence.
This story originally appeared in British GQ.