Season after season, "Game of Thrones" did not shy away from controversial and violent scenes. During its fifth season, the show even came under fire for choosing to go ahead with Sansa Stark's rape scene even though it wasn't included in the "A Song of Ice and Fire" books by George R.R. Martin.
One of the show's directors James Podeswa discussed the show's decision to portray sexual violence and revealed to Forbes that producers Dan Weiss and David Benioff are now actually rethinking what they should incorporate in the sixth season.
"It is important that (the producers) not self-censor. The show depicts a brutal world where horrible things happen. They did not want to be too overly influenced by that (criticism) but they did absorb and take it in and it did influence them in a way," said Podeswa.
The director knew that their controversial scenes would be talked about, but he did not anticipate that people would react to it the way that they did.
"I welcomed the discussion about the depiction of violence on television and how it could be used as a narrative tool sometimes and the questionable nature of that. We were aware ahead of time that it was going to be disturbing but we did not expect there would be people in Congress talking about it," he said.
Podeswa will be directing the first episode of the new season, and he admitted that he faced a lot of challenges in doing so.
"Doing the first episode of a new season is always a bit tricky because they tend to lay down a lot of tracks for the season and check on where the characters are now," he explained. "They're not usually the most dynamic episodes."
He then teased that the first episode will be action-packed that would have audiences at the edge of their seats. "Happily for me this year the producers tried to work against that. The season gets off to an amazing start, stuff of consequence happens and the first two episodes are really strong," he shared.
Podeswa added that they returned to some of their old set locations to film season 6 episodes, and he is happy how things shaped up for the show.
"Logistically it's the most complex show on television...Last year we shot in Croatia, Spain and Northern Ireland. This year we had one day in Croatia, then Spain and Northern Ireland. I did a lot of things I've not done before, especially in visual effects. The producers have the toughest job; I just go where they tell me to go. I think the show is a piece of magic," he gushed.
