'Game of Thrones' is shot on a very similar kind of schedule to a TV show, but there's a lot more time and focus put into the script.
You pull anyone from an alien planet down to Earth, and you want to show them great work, show them Tywin Lannister on 'Game of Thrones.' I mean, it's just as good as it gets.
For 'Game of Thrones,' I realized immediately that it was about the characters.
'Game of Thrones' is the broadest of narratives. I don't know if anyone in the U.S. has done a story on such a large scale before, both in terms of what George R.R. Martin wrote and what's on the show.
It's very unusual on 'Game of Thrones' for there to be a deleted scene because the scripts are pretty locked in. There's rarely a reason to say, 'Hey, we don't need this scene.'
No director directs 'Game of Thrones' without reading all the episodes and knowing what's going on. All the episodes are written in advance, so you can do that, which is an important point.
I was really, really stagnating and getting bored in the steady work of television and didn't really know what movies I would be making that Hollywood would be making, and then I went on to 'Game of Thrones,' and it was just like, everything I've been waiting to do was handed to me by really nice people.
The hardest part of 'Game of Thrones' is there is so much incredible talent bouncing off the walls that you'll actually miss some of them, and not getting it is very intimidating.