How 'Game of Thrones' has kept final season a secret so far

Spoilers aren't coming

Remember last year, when the Game of Thrones fan community had a field day after the scripts of the entire show were leaked online, well in advance to their TV release? It might have been fun for us but not for the team behind the hit HBO series.

In order to prevent something like this happening again, the Emmy Award-winning show has taken extreme measures this year. Code names, secret sets, disappearing scripts — Game of Thrones has gone to great lengths to keep secrets for its upcoming final season.

According to E Online!, rumour had it that multiple endings were being shot to throw off spoiler spies, but starlet Maisie Williams denied anything remotely close to happening on her appearance on the Jimmy Kimmel Live show. 

PHOTO: WINTERISCOMING.NET

"Well, I heard this, and I immediately thought, ‘I don't think we've got the budget to shoot lots of different endings'," Williams said.

However, Williams' co-star and onscreen sibling, Sophie Turner revealed what actually happened to keep the secrets of season eight. Turner confirmed the reports of self-destructing scripts (they wouldn't blow up, this isn't a movie), but said "it's all true."

"I mean, we wouldn't get anything physical. We would have it on an app. We would get sent sides for the scenes we were shooting the next day. So we would have to learn it all the day before," Turner told Digital Spy. "And once you'd read it, it disappeared 24 hours later, and you could never access it again. It's tighter than the White House security!"

PHOTO: THE VERGE

Turner's comments support what Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays Jaime Lannister on the show, had previously said about the scripts. "They're very, very strict. It's reached a crazy level this year," he revealed to Esquire. "We actually get the scripts and we shoot the scene but we only have it digitally and when you've done the scene, it just vanishes. It's like Mission: Impossible...'This will self-destruct'."

Not just this but visitors on the set would be asked to cover their phone cameras to avoid any pictures being taken. Also, the cast had code names as well, Turner revealed, so that nobody would know who was really on set that day. The show itself also had a code name too: Face of Angels.

PHOTO: HBO

"It's a random one!" the actor had said.

As for the ending, Coster-Waldau said he was satisfied. "I also know that we end the right way and the show ends on its own terms," he said. "When I read the scripts for the last season I was like, 'Wow, they really pulled it off'."

The cast has been paying tribute to the series as production comes to an end. Williams recently marked the end of filming with a bloody Instagram post, Turner got a tattoo to commemorate her time on the series and Emilia Clarke penned an emotional note to Belfast, the country they filmed in.

Game of Thrones returns to HBO in 2019.

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