George R. R. Martin purple wedding: “I’d been building up to it for three years”

WARNING: This post pertains to S4E2 of Game of Thrones.

Still dazed over that earth-shattering episode of GOT?

Then here are some thoughts from both Author George R. R. Martin and Director Alex Graves.

Entertainment Weekly spoke to author George R. R. Martin:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: In some ways, Joffrey’s death is the toughest death for viewers because he’s such an entertaining character to lose. You really had such fun with that character and Jack Gleeson’s performance is so malevolent. Can you talk about the decision you made to end this character when you did and how you did?

MARTIN: Oh boy, it was so long ago! Lets see, the book came out in 2000, so I guess I wrote those scenes in like 1998. I knew all along when and how Joffrey was going to die, and on what occasion. I’d been building up to it for three years through the first books. Part of it was that there’s a lot of darkness in the books. I’ve been pretty outspoken in my desire to write a story where decisions have consequences and no one is safe.

But I didn’t want it to be unrelentingly bleak—I don’t think everyone would read the books if everything was just darkness and despair and people being horribly tortured and mutilated and dying. Every once in a while you have to give the good guys a victory — where the guys who are perhaps a lighter shade of grey have a victory over the guys who are a darker shade of grey.

The Red Wedding and this — fans call this the Purple Wedding — occur in the same book. In the TV show, it’s separate seasons. But Joffrey’s death was in some ways a counterweight for readers to the death of Robb and Catelyn. It shows that yes, nobody is safe—sometimes the good guys win, sometimes the bad guys win. Nobody is safe and that we are playing for keeps.

I also tried to provide a certain moment of pathos with the death. I mean, Joffrey, as monstrous as he is — and certainly he’s just as monstrous in the books as he is in the TV show, and Jack has brought some incredible acting chops to the role that somehow makes him even more loathsome than he is on the page — but Joffrey in the books is still a 13-year-old kid. And there’s kind of a moment there where he knows that he’s dying and he can’t get a breath and he’s kind of looking at Tyrion and at his mother and at the other people in the hall with just terror and appeal in his eyes—you know, “Help me mommy, I’m dying.” And in that moment, I think even Tyrion sees a 13-year-old boy dying before him. So I didn’t want it to be entirely, “Hey-ho, the witch is dead.”

I wanted the impact of the death to still strike home on to perhaps more complex feelings on the part of the audience, not necessarily just cheering.

You can read more of that here.

Meanwhile Director Alex Graves, spoke to Deadline about the killing Joffrey so early into the new season.

DEADLINE: A lot of shows would not kill off a major character the second week in to their new season. Pretty unique way to handle things and not something we’ve really seen before on Game Of Thrones.

GRAVES: Well, (writers) David and Dan really made a smart choice which is that while they could have drawn it out to the point where Joffrey died later in the season, they were excited about shaking up the way the seasons normally go and really getting off to a bang of a start. And then so much happens in the latter part of the season that is so massive, there’s no way they would have been able to fit it in and to adjust it.

DEADLINE: How do you think fans are going to react to tonight’s show and the killing of Joffrey?

GRAVES: Well, I hope they enjoyed it. I was really glad after the Red Wedding for the first time to find out that Joffrey was killed because it just seemed fair. But I hope that they are surprised and I hope that they are amazed at how much happened in the episode and I hope they can perceive how incredible all of the work that went in to it was.

DEADLINE: Unlike the Red Wedding massacre of last season, there was really only one death at the Purple Wedding – though granted, it was a big death.

GRAVES: I think the Purple Wedding was really meant to be different from the Red Wedding. It was a poisoning and the death was very much about what the result of his death will be in the story, which is expansive. And also the fact that after all of the horrific twisted fireworks of Joffrey, somebody got in to that wedding and poisoned him from the inside. And it’s just that simple and it’s just for that devious. And that also plays in to where things are heading.

You can read more here.

And go behind the scenes of the filming with EW here.