Game Of Thrones Cast Won’t Have Access To Season 8 Scripts As HBO Tightens Security

For years, Game of Thrones has retained the rather unfortunate title of TV’s most-pirated show. But during season 7, things threatened to spiral out of control.

Not only did HBO’s international partner leak episode 4, “The Spoils of War,” two days ahead of schedule, but the network itself was crippled by a massive security breach, when 1.5 terabytes of data was stolen. Subsequent reports later confirmed that the two incidents were entirely unrelated but by that stage, the damage was already done, and season 7’s penultimate instalment, “Beyond the Wall,” was posted online prior to HBO’s initial broadcast.

It turns out Thrones fans needn’t worry about HBO repeating the same mistakes during the crucial eighth season though, as Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) told Scandinavian talk show Skavlan (via Fansided) that he won’t have access to season 8’s scripts, and will instead learn his lines through an earpiece.

"The first season we got the scripts like you should get them and then you could sit and do notes and stuff. And then after a couple of years, they got paranoid because there was some leaks so we had to get them only digital, on a PDF file. And then the hack happened, so now we’re not even going to get the script. Now we are going to do a scene, we will be told what’s going to happen and then we roll. We’re all going to have earpieces for the scene and then someone’s going to tell you the line and then you’re going to do the line."

Granted, this might not be the case for all cast members, as we learned late last week that many of the show’s leading players had returned to Northern Ireland to begin work on season 8. In fact, Liam Cunningham (Davos Seaworth) confirmed that he was given access to all scripts in advance, even if he wasn’t able to open them. Either way, HBO is clearly taking all necessary precautions to protect Thrones‘ long-anticipated swan song.

Game of Thrones returns for its eighth and final season in 2019, and filming is already underway in the show’s Belfast hub. Word is that the primary cast members are under strict orders to avoid photos with budding fans in order to negate spoilers, but that hasn’t stopped all set photos from finding their way onto the interwebs.