Watch George Lucas visit the set of Game of Thrones in making-of featurette

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

No matter how much death, dragon fire, poisoning and general backstabbing happens on the show, everyone seems to want to play the Game of Thrones – or at least play on the set of the show. Indeed, getting to visit the land of Westeros would be one magical time, and come the final season of the show some familiar faces were able to spend some time on the set, namely actors Martin Starr (SILICON VALLEY, KNOCKED UP), Rob McElhenney (IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA) and the STAR WARS maestro himself, George Lucas. In a new making-of featurette, we get an in-depth look at how they brought the first episode – “Winterfell” – to life, including cameos for the first two actors and Lucas visiting the set because, well, he’s George f**king Lucas.

[SEE MORE]

The video, running at a lengthy 18 minutes, covers the making of everything important in the series opener, including the meeting of characters like Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) and Sansa (Sophie Turner). But at the 3:40 mark the segment begins that covers all the special faces that came to visit the set, and here we see that Starr and McElhenney were dressed up as men following Euron Greyjoy (Pilou Asbaek), with the latter getting an arrow through his eye.

“They gouged my eye out – they gouged my f**king eye out,” McElhenney fondly recalls while sporting a bloody eye socket. “They can put it back in, right? [David] Benioff told me they would.”

Starr is a member of the HBO family, starring on the show SILICON VALLEY since the very first season. McElhenney and THRONES creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss go back some time, with the latter two writing an episode and having cameo roles as lifeguards in the “The Gang Goes to a Water Park” episode. Seems like a worthy returning of the favor by having the SUNNY star come in and get an eye shot out.

[SEE MORE]

Then there’s the arrival of the lord of nerd culture himself – George Lucas – who came onto the set for the day and watched the magic come to life. We see Lucas talking to the cast and crew, including Clarke and Kit Harington (Jon Snow), playfully directing one of their scenes – where he doesn’t much care about Harington's character enough to give him notes. Benioff looks back on the special day, recalling playing with STAR WARS toys when he was a little kid making up his own stories.

“When we found out that George Lucas wanted to visit, we thought maybe it was a practical joke. And then we were really excited and also nervous because – it’s George Lucas. The first time I can remember telling stories was me as a little kid mashing together these stormtrooper dolls. For so many of us, he’s the one who started our obsession with this kind of big, epic storytelling.”

The video as a whole is a fascinating watch and a deeper dive into the episode than your typical “Inside the Episode” that they do at the end of each episode, and it’s worth a full watch. Towards the end, there’s a pretty funny bit where Harington talks about getting his…private bits caught while doing a VFX scene, which sounds painful, but also hilarious. Ah, the magical world of entertainment!

GAME OF THRONES is airing Sundays on HBO.