David Benioff and D.B. Weiss clearly know how bad the backlash to Game of Thrones’ final season was. The show’s creators did, after all, skip their scheduled appearance at the show’s San Diego Comic-Con panel after the internet began ripping the final season to pieces online, and remained silent for months after the finale aired. So one might wonder why, at a panel at the Austin Film Festival over the weekend, the two chose to ruminate on just how underqualified they were for the job of adapting the fantasy mega-series in the first place. Perhaps they hoped a display of modesty would earn them some slack. But whatever outcome they desired, what they got instead was more outrage.

Twitter user @ForArya, who was in attendance, recapped the panel in a Twitter thread. During the panel Benioff and Weiss reportedly acknowledged that they had basically no TV qualifications to speak of at the time they landed their HBO deal. That fact alone was not new, but the extent to which that affected their early work was striking. Describing their earliest meeting with George R.R. Martin, Benioff said the author questioned their bona fides, per @ForArya. “We didn’t really have any,” he said. “We don’t know why he trusted us with his life’s work.” The two also apparently admitted to making basic writing mistakes in the pilot, saying, “Everything we could make a mistake in, we did.” That included script, casting, and costume design. Weiss described the experience as, essentially, a very expensive film school; the two didn’t even know how to work with costume designers, for instance, which made the entire thing a huge learning experience. After producing a season filled with 39-minute episodes, the two reportedly said HBO asked for an additional 100 minutes to fulfill their contractual obligations—so they added, for example, a shared scene with Robert Baratheon and Cersei Lannister, who previously somehow shared zero scenes in the entire season.

The revelations in the thread went on from there, including that the two downplayed fantasy elements to expand the fan base to include “mothers, NFL players” (?), and that they never really sat down to try and boil down all of the books’ essential elements, as they found the scope to be too big. Instead, they said, they thought about the scenes they wanted to depict, and that the show was about power. The entire story might be designed to project underdog status—look at where they are compared to where they started! But in the minds of plenty, especially those who have been critical of Benioff and Weiss before, it was just proof of white men’s ability to receive chances and benefit of the doubt that few others could dream of with such slim qualifications.

Ever since the finale aired, the Game of Thrones cast has been forced to acknowledge or avoid discussing the negative response, but Benioff and Weiss had previously largely avoided situations that would force them to respond. It’s striking, if slightly baffling, that the two decided to make these comments now. Even stranger is that the discussion seemed to confirm the harshest suspicions fans have harbored all along, or at least since they found themselves without Martin’s source material.

The season eight backlash came from fans and even Martin himself, but the show also managed to stage a victory lap at September’s Emmys nonetheless. It remains to be seen what Game of Thrones’ ultimate legacy will be. On one hand there’s a good chance there will never be a show like it again, in terms of broad viewership domination—and its mega-popularity could easily become its defining factor in the annals of TV history. Whether it’s remembered for anything beyond that impact is not guaranteed—but at least Benioff and Weiss got some solid TV writing experience out of it.

Game of Thrones Language Creator Reviews People Speaking Valyrian and Dothraki

This post has been updated.

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