How Benioff and Weiss put ‘Game Of Thrones’ behind them
The Game Of Thrones boys are back. Five years after their incest and dragons spectacle came to a controversial end (more on that later), D. B. Weiss and David Benioff have just unveiled what they have been working on almost non-stop ever since. You may have heard – it’s different; it’s popular; and it’s pretty damn complicated.
Speaking to NME from the US, Weiss (whose D. B. initials stand for Daniel Brett) and Benioff are with Alexander Woo (True Blood, The Terror), their new collaborator and co-creator on the project. Benioff and Woo are in separate parts of LA and Weiss is in his native Chicago. Weiss, now 52, is proof that you’re never too old or successful to shack up with your parents. “They act happy,” he says. “If they’re not happy about it, they’re very good actors.”
How do you follow up a show like Thrones? At its peak, the HBO adaptation of the George R. R. Martin novels was the biggest show in the world. It has won more Emmys than almost any other programme, and it made its stars and creators immensely wealthy household names. What Benioff and Weiss are doing next isn’t a Star Wars film – they decided to leave that; it isn’t a series about what the US would look like if slavery had never been abolished – that was dropped. Instead, as part of their $250million, five-year deal with Netflix, they have decided to adapt a series of Chinese novels about aliens. Those novels, written by Liu Cixin, are called Remembrance Of Earth’s Past. The show, named after the first novel, is 3 Body Problem.
Given their passion for all things Thrones, it isn’t a great shock that the pair were unable to resist returning to fantasy and sci-fi – especially when their more grounded project proved tricky to get going. But where Thrones was heavy on hot sex and horses, 3 Body Problem seeks to turn its audience on with physics and space. No one so much as shows their bum. The show, which is difficult to condense into an easy one-line description, features the world’s top scientists trying to solve cosmic riddles; a coded message from a distant planet; and an alien race due to arrive on Earth in 400 years. It’s more Large Hadron than large hard-on.
Given the amount of science in the show – it’s a lot – have the trio become smarter as a result? “It’s hard to say if it’s made us more intelligent,” says Woo, “because any information we gained is sort of counterbalanced by the inevitable mental decline of age.” Weiss says he may be the most scientific of the three, though he concedes it’s “probably a relatively low bar”. He says that in order to get the science of the show right they were lucky enough to collaborate with some “extremely clever people” including experimental particle physicist Matt Kenzie from Cambridge University, who worked on the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator. “Quantum entanglement is a difficult thing to explain to people,” Weiss says. As theoretical physicist Richard Feynman may have once said, “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.”
“I don’t know if I’ve read anything that has an ending as beautiful as ‘3 Body Problem'” – David Benioff
3 Body Problem is said to be Netflix’s most expensive show yet, at a reported $20million per episode. But its creators are used to treating these claims with great suspicion. “It’s difficult to discuss these things for many reasons, some of them political,” says Weiss, when asked about the cost of each episode. Part of the problem is that the numbers are “so arbitrary” that five different figures could all be accurate. Almost everything they read about the cost of Thrones was wrong, says Weiss – “to the point where it makes me question reporting in general,” adds Benioff, “because if reporting on something as objective as a budget for a show could be so wildly inaccurate, including by respected publications…”
When it comes to Thrones publicity, it isn’t a shock to hear that the show’s creators may have a bone to pick. The press gleefully leapt on the irresistible news about the Thrones finale being unpopular with some fans. For a while, it felt as though a petition to have the last season re-made entirely might actually get its way. Though Benioff and Weiss haven’t denied the validity of the fans’ feelings, it can’t have been easy to read.
How did it affect 3 Body Problem, knowing how crucial it can be to stick the landing? Benioff, who is 53, admits that something that big is bound to influence the way you approach work in the future. When they made Thrones, they thought about the ending of the series as “a real uptown problem”: given that Martin was still writing the books, Benioff and Weiss didn’t know the show would last so long and that they would work so much faster than Martin – who was so slow that the series came to an end before the books. 3 Body Problem is different, Benioff explains, because the novels were already written and both he and Weiss were “enthralled” by the ending already provided by Liu. “I’ve read a lot of science fiction books,” says Benioff. “I’ve read a lot of big epic sagas. I don’t know if I’ve read one that has an ending as beautiful as this one. It’s such a wildly ambitious, almost impossibly ambitious, story that literally takes you to the end of time and the end of the universe.”
“If we run into the rocks we’ll deal with that when it happens” – D. B. Weiss”
Thanks to Liu, the trio may even know what the final shot of the entire series would be. First, however, this first season needs to go well. “If the first series doesn’t work it will be one and done,” says Benioff, “but if we’re able to keep going and tell the whole story, whether that’s in three seasons or four seasons or whatever it is, we know the place we’re heading to, which is a lot of fun.”
Weiss and Benioff met when they were studying literature at Trinity College in Dublin, and Britain and Ireland have been a constant presence in their work. For Thrones, although both showrunners are American and live in the US, British locations were used time and time again. In 3 Body Problem, some of the same actors – all British or Irish – were re-hired from Thrones. (John Bradley, Jonathan Pryce and Liam Cunningham play a snack entrepreneur, cult leader and spy boss respectively.) The show moves much of the action from China to England, and Oxford in particular. Why are they so seduced by this part of the world? Benioff says that in order to make the show feel more global they wanted it not to be set in the US. And, having worked with a wealth of British actors for Thrones, they knew that they were never “divas” or “bastards”. British actors have tended to be their “good luck charm”.
In Thrones, one of these actors – although that would be stretching the term a little – was Ed Sheeran, who made a cameo in season seven partly as a surprise for superfan Maisie Williams. For 3 Body Problem, the trio went even bigger and asked Barack Obama if he would consider a cameo in the show, as a voice of reason when the prospect of alien invasion threatens to trigger societal collapse. The former president politely declined. “He did write us what might be my favourite rejection letter, as someone who’s received many rejection letters,” says Weiss. “He said effectively that he would love to help out but he wants to keep his powder dry in case the real thing comes along.”
Had Obama jumped aboard, it sounds as though he would have been treated well. Before Woo worked on 3 Body Problem he spoke to Bryan Cogman, the writer and producer who worked alongside Benioff and Weiss for the entire run of Thrones. Woo had met the pair before but wanted to ask Cogman what they were like. “He said, ‘You won’t find a single person who has anything bad to say about them.’ And that’s largely true.” Weiss chimes in: “I could find you somebody.”
Benioff and Weiss, who weren’t involved in the Thrones prequel series House Of The Dragon, also haven’t seen any of it – which is wise, as they can’t be asked to pass judgment. 3 Body Problem has been their life for the last few years now, and they give the impression that they are looking forward, not back. The signs look promising so far – the show debuted as the second most-watched title on Netflix over its first four days – but 3 Body Problem hasn’t reached the absurd, globe-straddling ubiquity of Thrones… yet. “There are puzzles to solve, if you are capable, but nothing and no one to root for,” said The Guardian. “The series aims at highbrow concepts about humanity,” said Vulture, “but its aesthetic and narrative approach is aimed squarely at comfortable approachability.” NME reviewed the series positively, with a four-star review that called it “deeply complex sci-fi that’s equally satisfying”. The series may not be embraced to the extent that Thrones was but it’s important to remember that Thrones was a slow-burner.
So what if this show isn’t a hit? What else might the pair have up their sleeves to offer Netflix? “A sleeve full of tears,” jokes Weiss. When you make a show this all-consuming, says Weiss, it’s difficult to think about any other ideas – the current show is enough. “We’re just very much all-in on making this work and we desperately want to tell this story because we think it’s unlike any other story we’ve ever read. We would love to get to the final image that David mentioned because we think it will be a profoundly satisfying and emotional experience for anyone who sees it. Right now we’re just damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead on this one, and if we run into the rocks we’ll deal with that when it happens.”
‘3 Body Problem’ is streaming on Netflix now
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Ralph Jones
NME
