'Game of Thrones' Star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau Reflects on Cast Dealing With Season 8 Hate

Season 8 of Game of Thrones sparked so much fury and controversy that it's hard even now to read through all the buzz. Fans of the show created a petition, demanding that the final season be remade with "competent writers," while other fans tweaked a Google algorithm so that when one searches "bad writers," the first results are Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.

Fan reactions are easy to find but it's a little harder to hear what the cast and crew of Thrones have to say about all the negativity. So on Saturday, when Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, the actor who played Jaime Lannister, spoke about his experience of the ending, fans were keen to listen. The actor appeared at Con of Thrones in Nashville and discussed how he, and the cast as a whole, dealt with the backlash.

According to Huffington Post, Nikolaj began with, “Every season has been intense in terms of the attention and discussion, but it was extraordinarily intense for a final season." He added:

“And we have this WhatsApp group, the actors, and I saw some people getting a little upset because some of the stuff is vicious, and if you make the mistake of start reading all that s**t, because if you guys get really angry about something ― I’m sure you did, some of you ― so you write to each other and go, ‘F**king a*sholes. This is so not what would happen! They ruined, they butchered George’s world!’ It’s just fun for you, but of course some got a little upset.”

“There was that kind of weird feeling of, ‘What the hell? We worked so hard,'" Nikolaj continued, adding, “I’m not asking anyone to feel sorry, by the way. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying how it was to get through that whole thing.”

For any disappointed fans, Nikolaj's perspective is enlightening. Of course, after seven seasons, viewers had high expectations for the final episodes, but it makes you rethink all the public negativity when imagining the hard work the actors put into it.