14 DAY TRIAL // Former US President George W. Bush made a surprise guest appearance in episode 10 of season 1 of HBO's “Game of Thrones” when producers used his head (just a prop, not the real one) for a beheading scene. Following intense criticism, HBO is apologizing for the offense caused.
As we also noted yesterday and as the video below can confirm (see after the 1-minute mark), the episode included a Bush's head on a stake in the scene in which Prince Joffrey shows Sansa what happens to “traitors,” including her own father, Lord Stark.
Not many noticed it at the time the episode aired, but one of the heads was Bush's.
In the DVD commentary, producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss confirm that the prop head did, indeed, resemble Bush to the tiniest detail, adding that they just used whatever they found lying around.
Fans weren't happy with the explanation, and this instantly went viral, prompting a more to the point response from HBO, Slash Film reports.
“We were deeply dismayed to see this and find it unacceptable, disrespectful and in very bad taste. We made this clear to the executive producers of the series, who apologized immediately for this inadvertent, careless mistake,” the network says in the statement.
“We are sorry this happened and will have it removed from any future DVD production,” it adds.
The producers were also forced to apologize, both for including the head in the first place and basically bragging about the inclusion in the DVD commentary.
“What happened was this: we use a lot of prosthetic body parts on the show: heads, arms, etc. We can’t afford to have these all made from scratch, especially in scenes where we need a lot of them, so we rent them in bulk. After the scene was already shot, someone pointed out that one of the heads looked like George W. Bush,” they say in a joint statement.
“In the DVD commentary, we mentioned this, though we should not have. We meant no disrespect to the former President and apologize if anything we said or did suggested otherwise,” the two add.
Even with the apologies, some fans (and many non-fans, above all) are still fuming that something like this should ever happen.
