The cast reunited at the 2019 Emmy Awards.
The Game of Thrones cast is together again!
At the 2019 Emmy Awards on Sunday, the cast of the hit HBO series took the stage together four months after the eight-season-long series' final episode.
Many actors nominated in the supporting acting categories were onstage to present the Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie award -- which went to Patricia Arquette for her role in The Act -- including Alfie Allen, Gwendoline Christie, Peter Dinklage, Lena Headey, Sophie Turner, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Maisie Williams.
Lead acting nominees Emilia Clarke and Kit Harington also joined their former cast members, as did Carice van Houten, who lost the Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series award to Cherry Jones at the Creative Arts Emmys ceremony. The cast received a standing ovation from the audience as they walked onstage, and Williams thanked all the fans for watching over the years.
"As much as we wish the show would have gone on forever, our time had come," Williams said. "Now we have a chance to thank all of those who watched."
Inside the show, Harington and Turner exchanged big hugs in a heartfelt moment captured by The Hollywood Reporter's Scott Feinberg. Turner warmly greets Harington, telling him, "You looks so handsome!"
While the series boasted many nominations for its cast, HBO wasn't responsible for each nomination that it counted, as Christie, Allen and van Houten all self-submitted themselves for consideration.
"Game of Thrones is unique because it has 26, 27, 28 series regulars, which is unusual," HBO president Casey Bloys told reporters after nominations were announced. "... The challenge of a series that big is if everybody submitted themselves... everybody could cancel out the entire show. So, there's strategic thinking in terms of how to submit and who to submit. Ultimately, if somebody decides to submit on their own, we'll help them and their reps, too. And I think it's the first time that anybody who ever self-submitted was nominated, so I think it's great."
While GoT certainly had an epic ending, the series' final season wasn't without its controversies, none more so than when a modern-day coffee cup made it into a scene.
"I think in Persian rugs it's tradition that you make a little mistake when you're making the rug because only God can do anything perfect, so for us, I guess that was just our [mistake]," co-creator David Benioff told Japan's Star Channel following the mishap.
"That's why I put the coffee cup there... a conscious, concerted statement of our imperfection," fellow co-creator D.B. Weiss quipped in response.
"We're concentrating so much on Daenerys and Jon Snow that we just didn’t see this coffee cup right in the middle," Benioff said of Clarke and Harington's characters. "So at first I couldn’t believe it, and then it was kind of embarrassment because, 'How did we not see this coffee cup in the middle of the shot?'"
Now though, Benioff said he's able to laugh at the mistake. "And then, eventually, it was just kind of funny. This one is just a mistake, and it’s kind of funny to us now, you know?" he said.
On a more serious note, during their appearance at Comic-Con, the cast addressed bigger audience backlash that came in the show's final season, which Coster-Waldau called "surprising."
"Every season we had huge controversies. It was from Ned Stark getting killed -- 'We're never going to watch that s**t show again' -- the Red Wedding, the end..." he said. "Obviously when it comes to an end, it's going to piss you off no matter what. Of course, at the end of the day, it's absolutely fine. If you hated the ending, that's great, just don't call people names."
Watch the video below for more on Game of Thrones' final season.
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