Game Of Thrones: The Biggest Changes From The Unaired HBO Pilot

This article contains discussions of sexual assault.

Sometimes, you just don't get things right the first time around. The showrunners of "Game of Thrones," Dan Benioff and D.B. Weiss, know this better than most; the first pilot they shot for HBO's hit series apparently really, really stunk, leading to a reshoot that cost the premium network $10 million.

In James Hibberd's oral history of the series, titled "Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon," the journalist spoke to basically everybody involved with that disastrous first pilot, from Benioff and Weiss themselves to the episode's actors to series author George R.R. Martin (who wrote "A Song of Ice and Fire," the source material for the show). So, what happened here? Apparently, the original "Game of Thrones" pilot shoot was plagued with problems ranging from a rogue horse to weird costumes, the story didn't come across clearly to anybody who watched it, and on top of all of that, two of the show's lead roles ended up getting recast entirely for the new pilot. The general public hasn't seen this pilot — and it certainly feels like we never will if Benioff and Weiss have anything to say about it — but what specifically changed between that botched attempt and the obviously successful real pilot that got audiences hooked on "Game of Thrones?"

There's no question that the White Walkers are an enormous part of "Game of Thrones" lore. While the main characters all argue over who gets to sit on the Iron Throne and which Westerosi family will reign supreme, the threat looming in the far North — beyond the Wall guarded by Castle Black and the Night's Watch — is heading right towards the Seven Kingdoms, meaning that there's an army of undead ice zombies coming to wipe out all of humanity. Apparently, the White Walkers were really different in that original pilot — not only did they speak a language called "Skroth" that never resurfaced in the real series, but David Benioff and D.B. Weiss said the costumes just looked like absolute crap.

"The original White Walkers looked so terrible," Benioff said simply. "We just punted it."

Weiss confirmed this, saying that because they didn't have a super-clear vision for the creatures just yet, they figured they'd fix it in post-production ... only to realize that approach created more problems. "For the first White Walker, we stuck a guy in a green suit and thought we'd figure out what he looked like later with CGI," Weiss said. "Nobody said, 'That's an enormously expensive approach to the problem you have.' The thing to do was come up with [a costume], even if it's not 100 percent of the way there, and then fix it later with CGI as opposed to coming up with nothing and designing it entirely in CGI. That would have taken half the budget of the pilot just to do that."

It wasn't just the White Walkers who had some costume problems in the original "Game of Thrones" pilot, apparently; everyone on set remembers that nothing looked quite right. In 2014, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss spoke to Vanity Fair about the original pilot and said that even though their costumer, Michele Clapton, did an incredible job with the costumes, there was a huge problem: they all looked too new and clean. "But coming off the pilot, we realized all the costumes looked brand new. They all looked like they'd just been made the day before," Benioff recalled. "This is a period where people weren't taking their things to the dry cleaners. Aside from maybe the queen, everyone's clothes look dirty and sweat-stained."

In James Hibberd's book, others involved with the pilot confirmed that the costumes were different, and in this instance, "different" clearly means "worse." As Lena Headey (who played Cersei Lannister) put it, "I looked like a Vegas showgirl in the pilot — furs and massive hair, like a medieval Dolly Parton. Not that I'm complaining, I loved it." (At least Headey had a fun attitude about the whole thing.) Harry Lloyd, who played Viserys Targaryen in the show's first season, said his wig was completely absurd during the botched pilot: "I had a different wig. It was titanium and silver, and it was shorter and a bob. Looking back, it was a mistake."

Viserys wasn't the only villain with a different (again, worse) haircut. As producer Christopher Newman told Hibberd, Jack Gleeson's awful Prince Joffrey Baratheon had a much, much sillier look. "Joffrey had a different haircut," Newman said. "In the original pilot, it was more pageboy cut, slightly pudding bowl–ish, like Henry the Fifth. It wasn't that it didn't suit him being a little s**t, but it softened the edge. The modern cut in the version that aired gave him more spitefulness."

At this point, pretty much everybody knows that Catelyn Stark and Daenerys Targaryen, who were played by Michelle Fairley and Emilia Clarke during the remainder of the series, were both portrayed by different people in the original pilot. (Catelyn was originally played by Jennifer Ehle, best known as Elizabeth Bennet in the BBC's adaptation of "Pride and Prejudice," while Daenerys was played by Tamzin Merchant from "The Tudors.") So, what happened? Why were Ehle and Merchant replaced by Fairley and Clarke?

According to former HBO exec Michael Lombardo, Ehle balked at the fact that she'd have to move. "The actress who played Catelyn decided she didn't want to move to Northern Ireland," Lombardo explains in Hibberd's book without directly naming her. "I'm like, 'What?' Then you have a conversation with yourself about whether to force her to uphold her contract. In retrospect it was one of the best things that could have happened. Michelle Fairley took over the role and was fantastic."

Lombardo also weighed in on the situation with Merchant, saying that she didn't click with her co-star Jason Momoa (who played Daenerys' husband and Dothraki horse lord Khal Drogo in season 1). "There was a piece of casting we had to rethink, [a role] that was compromised," he recalled. "We all knew Daenerys's journey was critical. Her scenes with Jason just didn't work." (For his part, Momoa said that Merchant was "great" but he felt like his performance worked better with Clarke, saying, "When Emilia got there that's when everything clicked for me. I wasn't really 'there' until she arrived.") It seems like most people thought Merchant was good but Clarke was brilliant. As producer Bryan Cogman put it, "I thought Tamzin did a really good job. It's hard to say why things didn't work out. Ultimately, it's obvious Emilia Clarke was born to play that part."

Speaking of Khal Drogo and Daenerys Targaryen, their wedding was a part of the first "Game of Thrones" pilot — but apparently, it didn't look anything like what we ended up seeing in the finished product. In the real pilot, the wedding takes place in broad daylight and culminates in Drogo and Daenerys' wedding night, where they "consummate" the marriage (they don't speak the same language, and it's impossible to not read the scene as sexual assault). As Iain Glen, who went on to play Daenerys' right-hand man Jorah Mormont for the remainder of the series, said of the original wedding scene, it was shot at night in Morocco, so the visibility was terrible: "It was a bit ragged and, in some ways, ill conceived, and no one had great conviction. Since the wedding was shot at night, quite a lot of money had been spent on seeing absolutely f***-all."

Then there was a whole thing with a horse that wouldn't cooperate, to put it mildly. As George R.R. Martin recalled — he played a cameo in Daenerys' wedding scene that didn't make it to the real pilot — Drogo was supposed to give Daenerys a horse as a wedding present, but the "filly" kept getting spooked. Then, during filming on the original version with Jason Momoa and Tamzin Merchant, the horse was a part of the scene ... and ruined takes in the weirdest possible way. "So we're by this little brook," Martin said. "They tied the horses to the trees and there's a seduction scene by the stream. Jason Momoa and Tamzin are naked and 'having sex.' And suddenly the video guy starts to laugh. The silver filly was not a filly at all. It was a colt. And it was getting visibly excited by watching these two humans. There's this horse in the background with this enormous horse schlong. So that didn't go well either."

One huge and very necessary change between the original "Game of Thrones" pilot and the one that aired was a clearer relationship between Lena Headey's Queen Cersei Lannister and her twin brother Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), because apparently, people who watched that original pilot didn't get that the two were related in the first place. The whole incest angle here is actually pretty vital, especially when you consider that Jaime throws a whole kid — Bran Stark, played by Isaac Hempstead-Wright — out of a window when said kid catches him in flagrante with his twin sister the queen, and it makes absolutely zero sense for Jaime to commit attempted murder if his relationship with Cersei isn't totally taboo.

In that same Vanity Fair article, David Benioff revealed that Jaime and Cersei's relationship went completely over everyone's head when they watched that failed pilot. "That last scene in the pilot, where Jaime and Cersei, brother and sister, are making love — they didn't know that they were brother and sister, which was completely our fault," he recalled. (Asked if they just added expository dialogue, D.B. Weiss said they threw in lines like "My sweet sister!") George R.R. Martin confirms this whole thing in James Hibberd's book, but also says he thought the episode as a whole was, basically, fine.

"I liked the pilot," Martin admitted. "I realized later that I was a poor person to judge because I was too close to it. Some didn't know Jaime and Cersei were brother and sister. Well that wasn't a problem for me! My great familiarity with the material made it hard for me to objectively judge. I liked that they kept a considerable level of complexity. I'm told I'm under penalty of death if I ever show it to anyone."

"Game of Thrones," not including this failed pilot, is streaming on Max.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).