“What is this? Where did this come from? I don’t know if we really need the shit”
After years of television pushing boundaries with sex, violence and an ever-growing influx of penises on screen, it was perhaps only a matter of time before the Game Of Thrones franchise decided to shock viewers with something else entirely.
Enter: diarrhoea.
George R. R. Martin has shared his candid reaction to the opening moments of HBO’s new spin-off A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms, which kicks off with its lead character Ser Duncan “Dunk” the Tall squatting behind a tree and relieving himself as the iconic GoT theme plays.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Martin admitted the scene caught him off guard. “Yeah, that was a bit of a surprise,” he said. “Not to say that my characters don’t take s***s, but I normally don’t write about them at any length.”
The author revealed that, after watching an early cut, he questioned whether the moment was necessary at all. “When I saw the rough cut, I wrote, ‘What is this? Where did this come from? I don’t know if we really need the s***,’” he said. “But (showrunner Ira Parker) liked it for whatever reason.”
According to Parker, the scene was designed to undercut the heroic fantasy from the very beginning. While the script originally described Dunk “hearing the hero theme in his head” as he contemplates his destiny, Parker reframed the moment as a collision between ambition and reality.
“He’s hearing that call to greatness,” Parker explained. “But the reality of actually doing it — how scary it is — that turns his guts to water.”
The scene, he added, is meant to establish Dunk as “not a hero yet”, but “just a nervy kid with a nervous stomach”, setting the tone for a season focused on uncertainty, growth and reluctant bravery rather than instant legend-building.
When asked whether the moment involved any visual trickery, Parker joked to Variety that “a magician never gives it away”, before clarifying: “We don’t have the budget for fake anything on this show. Very, very little is done fake. That’s his butt.”
A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms* is based on Martin’s Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas and is set roughly a century before the events of Game Of Thrones. The six-episode series follows Dunk (Peter Claffey) and his young squire Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell) as they navigate Westeros long before dragons and dynasties dominate the story.
New episodes air Sundays on HBO.
