That Game of Thrones Cameo on Westworld Was George R.R. Martin’s Idea

Given the popularity of HBO’s Game of Thrones, a number of its stars have crossed over to other major franchises, with this week’s episode of Westworld surprising audiences with cameos from Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, an appearance which was an idea concocted by Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin. The scene featured the pair addressing a new park within the show’s narrative, as they played engineers who were attempting to steal a dragon from Medieval World, which was actually Drogon from the famous Westeros series. The idea came from an old TV trope in which characters from different series would cross over with one another.

“We’re also friendly with George R.R. Martin, and George had consistently since the first season said, ‘We’ve got to do a tie-in with Game of Thrones,’” Westworld co-creator Jonathan Nolan revealed to Variety. “People forget that George was originally a TV writer and he came up in the TV world in which you’d occasionally have these crossover shows, which the fans would f—ing freak out over. So George had always been pitching the crossover show.”

Nolan noted that, were he able to have enlisted Martin himself, he would have made sure the author appeared in the series.

“If he lived in Los Angeles, we would surely have insisted that he come and hang out on our set as well,” the filmmaker pointed out. “But the crossover with the existing Medieval World in the original [Westworld] movie [released in 1973] was just irresistible. And the amount of people, starting with George, who over the years had pitched some version of a crossover. We just — we couldn’t resist. And [David and Dan] were incredibly good sports about coming down.”

With both series being produced by HBO, the nod to Game of Thrones didn’t have to be subtle, with discussions even taking place about which specific dragon from the series and how old it would appear in Westworld taking place.

“We had to choose,” Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy detailed. “I remember there was a whole big debate about which season dragon for its size because the dragon grew.”

Nolan added, “There was some back and forth about whether Season Four or Season Five Drogon, and some debate about how big the room was and what position the dragon could be in. But yeah, it’s just irresistible.”

New episodes of Westworld air Sunday nights on HBO.

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