HBO's hit show "Game of Thrones" broke records during this year's Emmy's since it won 12 awards, including best drama and best supporting actor for Peter Dinklage's role as Tyrion Lannister, among many other distinctions.
Of course, the show's road towards victory was not without its challenges. "Game of Thrones" has been pushing the envelope of television standards ever since its first season. But during the fifth season of the show, many fans cried foul when the show decided to let Sansa Stark be raped by her new husband Ramsay Bolton, as well as let Stannis Baratheon sacrifice his own daughter Shireen at the stake for the Lord of Light just to ensure his victory in the North (he failed and met his death, nonetheless).
Many people even committed never to watch the show again because of those controversial storylines, and encouraged others to do so just so the show will no longer condone what they deem as unnecessary plot lines.
However, show runner David Benioff explained that they never meant to upset people with their storytelling."We never set out to offend anyone," he told Entertainment Weekly. "To try to offend anyone would be juvenile, but to be afraid to offend people would be cowardly. There were people saying they were never going to watch again. We're just trying to tell the story the best we can."
So after their astounding Emmy victory, Benioff cannot help but feel overwhelmed. "This means a lot, it's a very nice feeling," he said. "It's such a surreal experience. Dan (Weiss) and I have been working on the show eight years now, back to that first meeting with George (R.R. Martin) at The Palm right by here on Santa Monica Blvd. To have George sitting right in front of us, to have it happen on his birthday, to break the record for most Emmys... the whole night's been surreal and so much more than we expected or could have hoped for. It's just really, really fun."
When Benioff and Weiss won best writing, they thanked the show's cast and crew during their acceptance speech and also thanked HBO for taking a chance on them and "believing in dragons."
"We knew that there would be some resistance at first to a show set in this genre... we knew it would take a while," Benioff said. "But we'd hoped if we did our jobs and if we were fortunate enough to be blessed with the cast and crew that we were blessed with... and if we got lucky, that we'd get there eventually."