Game of Thrones/Song of Ice and Fire

IGN: If Jaime and Brienne were to meet again, they would be on opposite sides of the battlefield. How do you think he would respond to that?

Coster-Waldau: [chuckles] I think it would be very, very difficult for both of them. I mean, you have a feeling it might happen. The last bit of this scene they have is basically her saying exactly that. He doesn't say ["I hope that doesn't happen"] because he believes she'll beat him -- which she definitely would -- but it's more that he cares for her, and I think he believes that somehow they must recognize that the other one cares. I'm sure she knows he cares about her. The fact that she tries to give him back the sword Oathkeeper and he kind of says, "It's yours. It's always been yours," the subtext is it's almost like saying, "You keep my heart. It's yours. It's always been yours."

It's a beautiful moment, and the next thing that happens is she says, "Oh yeah, if we meet on the battlefield, honor compels me to fight you." [laughs] The fact is, this is the second time he's [dealing with] the whole thing of falling for the wrong person, of falling for the person you're not supposed to. Like, it happened for him when he was a teenager with his sister, and it kind of happened again without him being able to acknowledge it because it's too messed up. There's no way he can act on it, and even if he did, I think she would just basically slap him, I'm sure. Brienne is not the easiest person to be around.

IGN: Have you seen the fan response to the brief Brienne/Tormund interactions? That seems to hint how she might respond.

Coster-Waldau: [laughs] I saw this image, I think Gwen posted it. There was this beautiful image of Brienne and Tormund where they were like Kate and Leo from Titanic. It also seemed to me quite one-sided. I think Tormund is more into it than she is -- or maybe I'm getting protective about the Jaime situation. I'm already being jealous on his behalf.

“It’s a great scene,” says Coster-Waldau. “These characters are so much about holding their cards so close to their chest and they don’t want to reveal how they’re feeling. But we know there’s history between them, that this is more than two knights meeting. But they would never acknowledge that.”

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The sequence also nudged the question fans have wondered ever since the duo were first unwittingly paired in season 3: Is there real romantic interest between these two? Or is their relationship strictly based on mutual respect and some level of friendship? Showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss, who wrote this hour, used Bronn on the sidelines to give voice to an idea that Jaime and Brienne would likely never bring up to each other (crudely, of course, with Bronn suggesting both want to have sex with the other).

“[Bronn] tells us what the audience suspects,” Coster-Waldau says. “It’s a great way to get all that stuff into the audience’s head before the scene because then there’s this added subtext. Jaime is always about Cersei and what he can do to help her and how to achieve whatever she wants. And for Brienne, it’s the same – she has an oath to Catelyn Stark. She’s extremely strong willed and has her honor and has to do the right thing always. Sometimes, with both of them, you just want go, ‘For godssake, let it go for a one second. What about what you want?’ They never listen to themselves. And what I love about the end of this scene is there’s some heartbreak. Because, once again, they were close. But are they ever gonna be able to talk about something other than someone else’s agenda?”

Coster-Waldau went on to say that the romantic tension between the pair isn’t just wishful thinking by fans: “It’s that thing when two people are attracted to each other but they refuse to acknowledge that whole elephant in the room, and for everyone else around them it’s pretty obvious.And then, of course, when we cut to Brienne and Jaime, it’s very formal. It’s very correct. [Director] Mark Mylod, the way he staged it was very clever. He kept having us separated by furniture. There’s always a table between us, until the very end of the scene, and when they finally get close, it’s this heartbreaking moment. Usually when you get this close to someone you care about, you say something like, ‘Please be safe. I can’t wait to see you again.’ And here it’s like, ‘If I see you again, we’re probably going to have to try to kill each other.’ I love doing those scenes with Gwendoline [Christie], because there’s so much subtext. They never really say how they feel. They kind of decided long ago never to go into that area. And they’re both in a very difficult position.

In realtà non riesco molto a immaginarli come coppia romantica, ma il loro rapporto mi intriga parecchio XD