While the 70th Annual Emmy Awards are rapidly approaching, Deborah Riley took some time to talk to Deadline about the various production designs of season 8. Riley, who is up for the Emmy for Outstanding Production Design For A Narrative Period Or Fantasy Program, has been a part of the Game of Thrones crew since season 4, designing sets like Dragonstone, the House of Black and White, The Pyramids of Mereen, and the Loot Train Attack. Riley, along with her crew, chose the season 7 premiere “Dragonstone” to represent the team’s work at the Awards show. I’d say it was a great choice because the final 5 minutes of the episode are just a silent montage of how great the team did putting this iconic set together; however, Riley doesn’t want us to miss on the other pieces of this episode that they worked on, saying “With other design-rich sequences like the Citadel montage, which included extending the Citadel Library and the Restricted Area, introducing the Privy, Mess Hall, Isolation Ward, Infirmary and Autopsy Chamber, the extension of Winterfell and Cersei’s massive Map of Westeros, 701 (‘Dragonstone’) is a wonderful cross-section of the work of the Game of Thrones art department and all of us are very proud to be able to offer this episode for consideration.”
During her time preparing for the ceremony, Riley was able to catch up with Deadline and offer some interesting quotes regarding the upcoming final season of the show. “The final season nearly killed me” Riley says, ” I realized at a certain point that all of the work in previous seasons was just a warm-up for Season 8. By the end, I had nothing left to give and finished knowing I had done everything I could. Season 8 does not pull any punches and is raw and honest and important. I can’t wait to see it.” If this doesn’t get you excited for season 8, then I’m not sure what will. Especially considering all of the amazing designs Riley and her team has done for the show since they started in season 4. She also some experience in films such as The Matrix and Moulin Rogue, so hearing her talk about how all of that was a warm up for season 8 tells me this is going to be nothing short of spectacular.
When talking about the different sets she’s worked on, Riley gave a pretty clear indication that Dragonstone was her favorite saying “Dragonstone was the piece of the puzzle that I was most excited about. The outline described so many elements that were going to need to fit together, both locations and set builds. I also felt a great responsibility in helping to tell the story of the character through the presentation of the space. I knew from the start that it was going to take careful planning to make it work as a believable whole.” She went on to say that the inspiration for the home of Daenerys Targaryen was Louis Kahn and the Salk Institute and Eglise Notre Dame de Royan. Speaking more on the reasons why Dragonstone is such an iconic set and an important moment in the series, Riley said “The power of the sets and locations to help tell the story is something that we always took very seriously and the homecoming of Daenerys Targaryen into her ancestral home of Dragonstone was something that Dan Weiss and David Benioff gave specific instructions about.” It’s pretty clear that Daenerys’ homecoming was a focal point that the crew really wanted to get right to start season 7.
And season 7 had some amazing sets, but according to Riley, season 8 has given her team more work than ever before, despite being only 6 episodes. “We had so many massive builds that all seemed to be happening at the same time. As there were less characters, it meant that there were less alternatives to shoot on the schedule. This had bought us time in the past, as it gave the shooting crew more options. We had to work faster—there was no other way around it. We were building the Dragonstone Audience Chamber at the same time as we were building Euron’s ship, The Silence. For the size of this show, we were a relatively small team in Belfast and this stretched us beyond what we were expecting. The good thing is that we were all used to working with one another and beyond the basic set-up, it was the loyalty of the crew and our pride in the show that enabled the sets to be finished on time.” Speaking more specifically about the creation of Euron Greyjoy’s ship, The Silence, Riley said “We looked at various ships throughout history, from Japanese medieval warships through to those of the Roman navy. The Silence took shape with a massive kraken on the Naval Ram, an extrapolation of the Ironborn sigil.”
Riley’s team isn’t just responsible for conceiving and building sets; they design props, scout for locations, make sure to stay in the budget, and go over everything they can come up with to make sure it goes with the story they’ve already started. Riley thinks one of the episode’s that showcases all of her team’s talents is “The Spoils of War” saying “Beyond the selection of the location and the massive scorpion that Bronn uses, “The Spoils of War” was all about set decoration and keeping the continuity throughout the sequence. The wagons, the horse tack, elements to be burnt, the devastation and the destruction all need to be followed throughout the sequence. The props people, the greensmen, on-set painters and set dressers all did a phenomenal job to make the battle and the aftermath as convincing as possible, all the while working closely with SFX and VFX to be sure we were all telling the same story.”
Riley, and her team, deserve to win the Emmy, and I believe they will, along with a few other members of the Game of Thrones cast and crew as the show was nominated for a whopping 22 awards this year. Hearing her talk about season 8 and the hard work her team has put into it, makes me all the more excited for the show’s final season.
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Are you looking forward to season 8 of Throne? How many Emmy’s do you think the show will win this year? Let us know in the comments below!
A few of my favorite things include my pet dragon (Drogon), Game of Thrones, Disney movies and theme parks, the MCU, DC movies, Star Wars, sports, and my rather large Funko Pop collection. Daenerys Targaryen is my queen, Robert Downey Jr is my man crush, and Simba is my spirit animal.
