Running a Newsroom in Minneapolis + How to Make a Game of Thrones For Less

Summary

Channels with Peter Kafka

Episode: Running a Newsroom in Minneapolis + How to Make a Game of Thrones For Less
Date: January 28, 2026
Host: Peter Kafka (Vox Media Podcast Network)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Channels features two distinct interviews exploring the intersection of media, technology, and culture:

• First, Peter Kafka talks with Kathleen Hennessey, editor of the Minnesota Star Tribune, about the challenges and opportunities of running a newsroom in the high-pressure, rapidly evolving news environment of Minneapolis, particularly during a period of public unrest and viral citizen journalism.

• Then, Kafka interviews Ira Parker, showrunner for HBO’s new Game of Thrones spinoff, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, diving into how to make a premium fantasy series on a much smaller budget, and how the expectations for "big TV" are evolving.

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Segment 1: Running a Newsroom in Minneapolis

[Start: 01:32 – End: 16:14]

Setting the Scene: News in Crisis

• Kathleen Hennessey describes being at home when she heard about the latest Minneapolis shooting:

  "I was at home. I was at home talking to my mom on the phone, just trying to take a little breather." (03:24)

• Immediate shift from downtime to work mode, with communication ramping up via calls and Slack channels.

  "There are a few, few calls, few checks, slack channels to immediately sort of look in on and make sure that things are rolling." (03:39)

Newsroom Activation & Workload

• The Star Tribune operates on "high alert," with increased staffing on weekends/nights in response to ongoing unrest.
• Upon major incidents, the newsroom rapidly mobilizes—15 people activated within minutes, up to 50-60 by end of day, including designers, editors, photographers, and videographers.

  "By the end of the day, 50 or 60, all in between designers and editors and videographers, photographers. Obviously, it takes a lot." (05:09)

Community Support and Burnout

• Mental health and workload balance are major concerns.
• Hennessey emphasizes tracking reporter hours, sometimes forcing people to "go home and take a break."

  "Sometimes we have had to just not gently and forcefully and with love and respect, tell people to go home and take a break." (06:28)

• Support pours in from other journalists and newsrooms sending food and messages, creating a sense of solidarity.

Information Environment: The Social Media Challenge

• Proliferation of cell-phone videos creates a "chaotic information environment."
• The newsroom is slower but more accurate than social media, prioritizing forensic analysis and video verification.

  "We know that our job is to verify it and to watch it closely and to slow it down a thousand times and to try to get the rights to it and to call the lawyers and figure out who took it." (08:24)

• Maintaining credibility means sometimes lagging behind viral Reddit/Instagram footage.

Handling Pressure from Readers

• Readers often push the newsroom to react quickly to what they see online.

  "It never feels good to have somebody send you an account and say, like, see, look, it's. This is what happened. Right. And you're like, yeah, I guess we're not quite reporting it that way yet." (09:19-09:23)

• Hennessey prioritizes "additive" reporting: assembling facts, context, and reactions—not just aggregating viral content.

Chasing "Ghosts" and Local Intelligence

• Many report tips come from activist Signal groups, but not all pan out.

  "We're just closer to the community. We know these neighborhoods, we know what's real, what's not. We have had some luck in getting ahead of that." (10:24-11:39)

• Star Tribune’s advantage: community connections and local perspective.

On Featuring User-Generated Content

• Internal debate about aggregating all the UGC, but the paper's identity is verification and context—not unfiltered raw feeds.

  "I'm not yet at a place where I don't think people come to us for unverified information." (12:06)

What Readers Want

• Live blogs since December are the most trafficked coverage. Readers want verified news, video, interviews, updates—a holistic package.

  "People are coming back several times throughout the day. I mean, they want, they want video, but they also just want news." (13:23)

Local versus National Journalism

• Kafka asks about differences in staffing versus her previous job at the New York Times.
• Hennessey desires the Times’ video-forensics resources, but values the Star Tribune’s local knowledge and depth on the ground:

  "We are just a little bit deeper on this story than the Times can be. And I appreciate that and our readers appreciate it." (15:31-16:05)

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Segment 2: How to Make a Game of Thrones For Less

[Start: 18:56 – End: 40:50]

Introducing the New Series and Its Pace

• Ira Parker discusses running A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and how the new series is intentionally smaller in scale and faster in production than its predecessors.
• HBO aims for new seasons every 18 months, a faster pace than previous major series.

  "We could do one a year... but it's probably going to end up being closer to one every 18 months." (19:26)

The New Show: Simpler, Smaller, More Accessible

• The core: following “one guy from the shittiest part of the realm”—no dragons, epic armies, or sprawling politics (21:02).

  "He's not a secret anything. He grew up with nothing... he has to figure out what he's going to do with the rest of his life." (21:02)

• Launching as a buddy comedy with broad appeal, designed for newcomers to Westeros as well as superfans.

  "It's a simpler story to become engaged with... hopefully bringing in a new generation, maybe even a younger generation to this universe." (22:36)

HBO and Franchise Strategy

• A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is based on George R.R. Martin’s last unadapted prose in this universe.
• HBO expected to protect their flagship property, balancing creative freedom and franchise oversight.

  "They are very much artist first... But, of course, this is the biggest franchise that they have and you don’t want it to go off the rails." (25:22)

Making “Game of Thrones” for Cheap—But Not Looking Cheap

• The new show operates on a quarter of the typical GoT episode budget.

  "We probably have about a quarter of the amount of money that a minute of Westeros television costs." (27:00)

• Shorter episodes, less VFX, and no dragons help keep costs down.

  "A lot less vfx... We wanted to be earthy... give what the land supplied us." (29:25)

• Production leans into Belfast’s "institutional memory" of GoT to boost efficiency.

Creativity Through Constraint

• Faster shooting schedules: 5 pages a day vs. the usual 2.5.
• Star rugby player Peter Claffey cast as lead for stamina and intensity (30:08).
• Less time for scene polish and staging, more reliance on atmosphere and actor chemistry.

  "It informs everything from the cinematography to the music to how we shoot our action sequences. I suppose it has even maybe a little bit of an indie feel to it." (27:15)

What’s on Screen When You Cut the Budget?

• Fewer set-piece fantasy elements; more focus on mud, horses, stunts, and “heart.”

  "What we do have is we have a lot of heart. We have some good horses, we have some nice landscapes, and there is a certain level of, I don't know, a love that bleeds through the screen." (34:24)

• Key battle scenes remain a highlight, but are more rooted and "brutal" than high fantasy VFX.

  "We do have one of, in my opinion, the best fucking battle that's ever been done in Game of Thrones..." (34:24)

Humor, Tone, and Accessibility

• Show has more comedy than previous GoT series, including physical gags and poop jokes.

  "You put in three or four poop and fart jokes and that's all anyone wants to talk about... His humor comes from his awkwardness... he is quite low born and living in the shit in the mud..." (36:04)

• Entry point for audience doesn’t require franchise lore:

  "You could watch this show without knowing what a Targaryen is or any of the lore or backstory. You could just access this show right away..." (24:12)

Duration and Franchise Future

• Potentially ten or twelve installments, as outlined by George R.R. Martin. Showrunner Parker pitches decade-spanning mini-seasons tracking the characters' lives.

  "I'd love to do four of these right now... come back in 10 years and do four more... then 10 years from then, come back and do the final four at the end of their lives." (38:39)

Working with George R.R. Martin: Pressure and Process

• Parker prefers adapting from Martin’s roadmap over working "with a blank page.”

  "It's nice to be given a roadmap by a living legend... I get to enjoy having these major tent poles set up..." (40:06)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Kathleen Hennessey on social media pressure:

  "It never feels good to have somebody send you an account and say, like, see, look, it's. This is what happened. Right. And you're like, yeah, I guess we're not quite reporting it that way yet." (09:19)

• Ira Parker on budgeting:

  "We probably have about a quarter of the amount of money that a minute of Westeros television costs." (27:00)

• Ira Parker on tone and accessibility:

  "Hopefully that allows more people to discover the show... There’s not a lot of magic in our world, but... hopefully we are the Hound and Arya, the TV show." (24:22, 34:24)

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Key Timestamps

• 01:32 – Peter Kafka introduces segment with Kathleen Hennessey
• 03:24-04:07 – Hennessey on responding to breaking news
• 05:09 – How the newsroom mobilizes after major incidents
• 06:28 – Addressing staff workload and community support
• 08:24 – On verification and the “chaotic information environment”
• 12:06 – Discussion on user-generated content vs. verified reporting
• 13:23 – What Star Tribune readers want in news coverage
• 15:31 – Comparing local and national-level reporting resources
• 18:56 – Kafka introduces Ira Parker and the new HBO series
• 21:02 – Parker explains the show’s simpler focus and character journey
• 27:00 – How the show is made with a vastly smaller budget
• 29:25 – Reducing expense: less VFX, more realism
• 34:24-35:40 – Audience expectations and show’s humor
• 38:39 – The theoretical long-term future of the series

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Summary in a Nutshell

• Star Tribune: Responds to crisis with a balance of urgency, caution, and community roots. Navigates social media-driven news cycles by prioritizing verification, depth, and the mental health of staff.
• HBO’s "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms": Deliberately scaled down for budget and creative reasons—more intimate, comedic, accessible, but still delivering spectacle and heart. Designed to be both a continuation and reinvention of the "Game of Thrones" television brand.

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This episode captures both the evolving demands on journalists in a hyper-connected era, and the shifting economics and creative strategies of premium television in the franchise age.

Transcript

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[Ira Parker]

when

[Kathleen Hennessey]

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[Peter Kafka]

From the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Channels with Peter Kafka. That is me. I'm also chief correspondent at Business Insider, and today we have two very different interviews that don't really match tonally, but sometimes we just have to roll with it. Up first, a brief dispatch from Minneapolis via Kathleen Hennessey, the editor of the Minnesota Star Tribune. The Strib, as we call it, back in the Twin Cities, has been doing indispensable coverage of what is technically called Operation Metro Surge. It is also one of many sources of news, and a lot of that other news comes from resident cell phone videos filmed on the street. That makes for a very rich and chaotic information environment. And that is a challenge for Hennessy and an opportunity for her publication to shine. Full Disclosure A long time ago, a very long time ago, I spent a few months as a paperboy and what was then called the Minneapolis Star and Tribune. I was not very good at it. Okay, then I have a conversation with Ira Parker, the man behind A Knight of The Seven Kingdoms, HBO's newest extension of its Game of Thrones universe. Like every Game of Thrones show HBO does. It is a very important show for hbo, but it's also, as Game of Thrones goes, a much more modest production. The shows are shorter. There are no dragons. They don't have sprawling casts. That makes them all much cheaper than a Game of Thrones classic production, as Parker tells me, which I think tells you a bit about the business environment for TV these days. Okay, let's get back to reality and Minneapolis. Here's the Star Tribune's Kathleen Hennessy. I'm here with Kathleen Hennessy. She is the editor of the Star Tribune. She's very busy. I appreciate her time. Where were you on Saturday morning when you heard about the latest shooting in Minneapolis?

[Kathleen Hennessey]

I was at home. I was at home talking to my mom on the phone, just trying to take a little breather.

[Peter Kafka]

So I assume that breather gets destroyed. Do you come into the office? How do you manage manage running a newsroom on a Saturday morning?

[Kathleen Hennessey]

Yeah, not immediately. You know, there are a few, few calls, few checks, slack channels to immediately sort of look in on and make sure that things are rolling. There's some security issues we always deal with right away and then but yes, I'll, you know, fairly quickly we move into the newsroom.

[Peter Kafka]

I'm just trying to get a sense of how quickly the newsroom, which is already working around the clock on a story that's been you guys have been writing about for two months, how quickly you have to sort of spin up additional resources for something like this.

[Kathleen Hennessey]

Well, like you said, we're sort of on high alert at all times. We've already beefed up staffing on weekends and mornings and nights. So for this reason. And then, of course, this is where this happened, minutes from our newsroom and blocks from where some of our reporters and editors live. So we're fast. People knew right away we were on the scene very, very quickly. And I'd say within minutes.

[Peter Kafka]

And how many folks can you, you told some before, you've got 50 people out of roughly 200 working on the story overall. How many were sort of working on the shooting and the angles on that on Saturday?

[Kathleen Hennessey]

Yeah. And to be clear, that's sort of like on any given minute, I mean, everybody in this newsroom is having some interaction with this story over time. But gosh, I would say, say we had 15 people within five minutes, probably activated. And by the end of the day, 50 or 60, all in between designers and editors and videographers, photographers. Obviously, it takes a lot. The story is rolling at a lot of different places. There's the whipple building that has sort of a steady progress protest. There's marches happening. There are, you know, we're still getting tips at all times about sightings of ICE agents and arrests. And so it is a little bit of an everywhere all at once feel

[Peter Kafka]

here, which is not sustainable. Right. I mean, I mean, you guys are the major newspaper in Minnesota. You're well staffed by lots of standards, but it's not a huge staff. How do you think about sort of balancing workloads and mental strains and all of that? I mean, this story will go on for some period of time. I don't know when it's going to end.

[Kathleen Hennessey]

We're definitely staffing for it. Right. Like, we're not constantly just reacting. We're making sure that people are on and looking for news at times when, you know, three months ago we might not have been. In the same way. All of our editors are paying very close attention to where everybody is at any given minute. And if we, you know, you know, anyone who knows reporters know that if you're not paying attention, all of a sudden, someone will be out working on their 18th hour and not complaining. So I've asked everybody to just really keep close tabs. And sometimes we have had to just not gently and forcefully and with love and respect, tell people to go home and take a break. We're also receiving just an extraordinary amount of support from journalists all over the country and newsrooms sending us food all the time and an extraordinary amount of notes and appreciation. And that really does help people keep going. We feel a little bit like we've had kind of the journalism world has wrapped their arms around us and that feels great.

[Peter Kafka]

So. So, as everyone notes, this is something that is. Is being documented over and over by residents in the streets on their phones. Many, many angles of the shooting on Saturday available on people's cell phones. So on the one hand, well, I think it's all good personally, but. But in that this information is documented and it's a resource.

[Kathleen Hennessey]

Absolutely.

[Peter Kafka]

It is also, I assume, a challenge for you to say, well, this is a video that is widely distributed on Reddit. It seems crystal clear that there's a man being shot by. How many checks in a case like that do you have to put in before you'll publish a story saying this is what happened versus there's a video that appears to say the following.

[Kathleen Hennessey]

Oh, we're pretty. I mean, we are very careful with knowing that a video that appears to show something does not mean that that is exactly what happened. Right. And our language is careful and we recognize, like, we're not going to. To be. To have every single video first, obviously. I mean, the video is sort of popping up on accounts all over the place. I mean, I really. We know that our job is to verify it and to watch it closely and to slow it down a thousand times and to try to get the rights to it and to call the lawyers and figure out who took it. Right. To do the. To do the hard work. And inevitably, that just means that, you know, we'll be slower than social media, but we'll be more accurate and more careful.

[Peter Kafka]

And fuller, is there a frustration either on your end or one that you pick up from your readers that say, well, I'm seeing this thing on Reddit or Instagram, why don't you guys have it?

[Kathleen Hennessey]

I mean, it never.

[Peter Kafka]

Why can't we. Why can't we publish this? It's already out.

[Kathleen Hennessey]

No, no, of course. I mean, just as a journalist, it never feels good to have somebody send you an accountant, say, like, see, look, it's. This is what happened. Right. And you're like, yeah, I guess we're not quite reporting it that way yet. Right. We're all competitive and we know the importance of speed, but we're really trying to hold to our process here. And just minutes before I called in here, I was going over what will be our sort of first really complete sort of forensic analysis of the video of the Preddy shooting on Saturday. And I'm okay, that that's taking us some time. And there's more video coming in all the time. Right. That it's worth taking a beat and going slowly for us.

[Peter Kafka]

I think there was a great line in the interview with Max Tanny on Saturday about chasing ghosts when you're trying to verify these tips. Give me an example of a ghost that was. That was hard to track down one way or the other.

[Kathleen Hennessey]

Oh, gosh. Well, some of this is just an. I'm speaking really for our photographers and reporters who are out and certainly not me. But a lot of the story, as everyone knows, is sort of being reported through these signal channels that various activists and neighborhood groups are on. And they're saying, I see, you know, ICE reported here, ICE reported there. And you got to, you know, you either get there instantly or you. You're there in the aftermath. Right. And they maybe were there or maybe it wasn't, or maybe it was just, you know, somebody else in a rental car driving. So there's, you know, we're. There are a lot of outlets. I don't want to you know, the Star Tribune, but everybody else that is spending hours every day sort of just driving around town chasing those kinds of tips. And I just think that's the nature of this. Like it's a hard story to cover that way. I think actually we're better positioned than some outlets because we're just closer to the community. We know these neighborhoods, we know what's real, what's not. We have had some luck and sort of getting ahead of, getting ahead of that and getting sort of better and more solid information first.

[Peter Kafka]

Have you thought about saying at some point, saying, well, look, if this stuff's all going to exist on social media, why don't we find out, find some way of sort of collecting it and provide. Because not, I mean, I'm a news junkie, I see a ton of this stuff, but most normal people don't see all the stuff all of the time. Is, do you ever consider saying, let's just assemble all the reader submitted video, collect it. We can say it's not verified, but you ought to see it.

[Kathleen Hennessey]

Yes, we're having those conversations. I'm not yet at a place where I don't think people come to us for unverified information. Right. I mean our job is to show them what is verified and what is real. And we've all had that experience where we've seen a video on social media and then we want to be like, wait, what is that? And then we go Google like the real thing. Right. So really our job is, is to be additive and to confirm and to name places and dates and locations and get reaction and comment from federal law enforcement officials or federal immigration officials and others. Right. And to really like paint the fuller picture. So yeah, so we are not yet at the point where we're trying to just gobble up all the ugc, all of the video and throw it on our site and say here. But we are collecting a lot of it for the production of journalism, you know, going forward. Yeah.

[Peter Kafka]

And you said people do come to you for verified information. Is, is. Do you think that is the thing people value most above all versus timeliness or seeing something that confirms what they believe to be true?

[Kathleen Hennessey]

Look, I think people are coming to us for a lot of things. We have had a running live blog now for since mid December that is by far our most visited, most trafficked piece of journalism. And people are coming back several times throughout the day. I mean, they want, they want video, but they also just want news. They want a whole mix of how we're telling this story and they want interviews with residents and the latest news from Walls or from Trump. And I think, but yes, it's, I think they're coming to us for, for verified reporting. And I think we, I hope what we're also finding is we're introducing some readers who aren't familiar with our work and maybe even younger readers to what verified reporting looks and feels like.

[Peter Kafka]

Last question. Up until last spring, you were an editor at the New York Times. You have not yet finished a full year at this job. When you think about working the Times with an enormous newsroom, but obviously has to cover the, versus the 200 folks you have in Minnesota with a much narrower focus, do you ever find yourself going, man, this. If I was the Times, we could have done this this much quicker or use this many more folks here or the New York Times has no idea what the Whittier neighborhood is. And that's our, that's our advantage here.

[Kathleen Hennessey]

Yes, to both of those things. I mean, I certainly didn't feel like I would get into this job and then suddenly feel like I'm competing with the New York Times. And that's not always pleasant. The Times has done extraordinary work on the story. They have a fantastic correspondent who's here. They know Minnesota very well at this point. So no, no shade on them at all. But I would say I covet there and others sort of video forensic skills. We don't have a visual investigations team, and so we have an extraordinary video producer who has become one of like a single one woman video investigation.

[Peter Kafka]

Your forensics team is a woman?

[Kathleen Hennessey]

Well, it's a few. I should say it's a few. But it's, you know, this, that was not our area of expertise in the same way that the certainly as the Times and the Post has done great work on that front. So, yes, there are things that we are learning on the fly that take us a bit more time. And I'm fine with that. I'm comfortable with that. And then there are all kinds of other stories that we're telling that other people aren't getting to. And we are just a little bit deeper on this story than the Times can be. And I appreciate that and our readers appreciate it. I think.

[Peter Kafka]

I appreciate your work. I started subscribing, I think last week your publisher, Steve Groh, put something out on social media and I said I should subscribe as well. Thank you for your time.

[Kathleen Hennessey]

Thank you, Peter. Take care.

[Peter Kafka]

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[Peter Kafka]

Ira Parker, you are the co, creator and showrunner of the Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which is another way of saying you've made HBO's newest game of Thrones show. That is a big job.

[Ira Parker]

It is. It has been a very fun job. Very fun job. But it can be big sometimes.

[Peter Kafka]

And you were just telling me you're working on season two now? Season one is, is debuting in January, so you've already answered my first question.

[Ira Parker]

Okay, we're, we're keeping it going. We're gonna try and get out one of these a year.

[Peter Kafka]

Is that really the pace? Do they expect one of these a year?

[Ira Parker]

Yeah, look, it's, I'd say it's probably going to end up being closer to one every 18 months, so. But we could do one a year.

[Peter Kafka]

But this is not like a previous HBO big big series where sometimes there'd be a two year wait or longer in between series. They want this to sort of come out at a pace.

[Ira Parker]

Yeah, look, it's, I'd say it's probably going to end up being closer to one every 18 months or so, but we could do one a year.

[Peter Kafka]

But this is not like a previous HBO big big series where sometimes there'd be a two year wait or longer in between series. They want this to sort of come out at a pace.

[Ira Parker]

Yeah, so maybe it's. Everything changes. It's tough to say. Game of Thrones, the original came out every single. I don't know how they did it. Those were 10 episodes hour long and they did that for a long, long time. And House of the Dragon, there's so much, I mean it's the biggest episodes of television anyone's ever shot in the entire world. So they need a little bit extra time. And we are quite smaller, we are quite simpler in our approach. We're a little grittier of the earth and so we can. A little more classically shot. We could turn these out at a faster clip.

[Peter Kafka]

Yeah, you're telling me a lot that I was going to get to. I want to talk to you about the, the sort of smaller scale this. But let's, let's step up and explain this show for a normal person who probably watched Game of Thrones or at least knows what it is they've heard. This is part of that universe. What is the, what's the, what should people know going into the show if they're going in pretty cold?

[Ira Parker]

So it is. Game of Thrones was quite big and sprawling and epic. And our show is a lot simpler. It follows instead of all of these Families all around the realm and everyone is battling everyone and lots of politics and the dead are coming to kill mankind and there's dragons. And we follow. We follow one guy and he's from the shittiest part of the whole realm. He was an orphan kid. And he's not a secret anything. He's just. He grew up with nothing. And he now finds himself at a crossroads where the last person he knew in the whole world is gone. And he has to figure out what he's going to do with the rest of his life. And so he sets off to this tournament with some aspirations of entering the joust, entering the lists. But of course, I think like a lot of us, when you go to try and do something hard like that, you know, there's also a lot of self doubt that comes with it. And so that's the journey that we followed the whole season.

[Peter Kafka]

And it's kind of a buddy comedy and it is funny. Big picture for you and hbo. Game of Thrones is a huge property. Hbo, Warner Brothers, Discovery, huge company. What do they want out of this series? What do they want out of you? They're still making other Game of Thrones stuff. They're still making House of Dragons. What sort of the expectations for, sort of what this show is supposed to do for HBO for the franchise?

[Ira Parker]

Look, I will say this is George's last unadapted prose within this world. So it was very. George R. Martin. Yes. And so that was obviously a big part of it, that these stories are beloved by people who have come to them. And not a lot of people have come to them. I mean, certainly a lot less than even A Song of Ice and Fire when that. And that, when that first came out. And so. But it has a, I think, almost a broader appeal in a certain way because it's, it's a simpler story to become engaged with. You're just. You're following one guy and. And it starts a little lighter, too. Game of Thrones, obvious. The original, the pilot starts with a bunch of mutilated bodies at a camp and the dead and, you know, it ends with a kid getting thrown out of a window. You know, we, we start. It's, it's. There is a buddy comedy, you know, aspect of this. It's two young kids setting off to a tournament. They're going to Coachella, they're going to Glastonbury. They're having fun. It's knights and lords and ladies all camping next to their servants. It's muddy. Everybody's enjoying themselves. Everybody's Drinking. Of course, you know, in George R.R. martin's work, Everybo, things turn dark quite quickly. And we do get to those elements that I think all the true Game of Thrones fans are gonna love. But at the beginning, it's a nice on ramp and hopefully bringing in a new generation, maybe even a younger generation to this universe.

[Peter Kafka]

And the way I think about it is you could watch this show without knowing what a Targaryen is or any of the lore or backstory. You could just, just access this show right away, which I assume is intentional.

[Ira Parker]

No, look, absolutely. And I. And again, we're just, we're following the novella. And whether or not that was George's intention or not, I actually think he was just trying to write a fun story within that wasn't following the main characters. It was from a different POV than you normally get. It's not the lords and ladies and kings and queens. It's not the higher ups, takes place at the bottom, at the shitty end of Westeros, at the muddy end of Westeros. And so there is, hopefully that allows a lot of access, hopefully that allows people, you know, more people to discover the show.

[Peter Kafka]

You mentioned George R.R. martin a couple times. He's had various relationships to the Game of Thrones properties on HBO over the years. Is he involved in this and who are the other key stakeholders? Again, with a franchise this, this big, how much leeway do you have to sort of follow what you want to do versus going up to Casey Bloys or George R.R. martin saying, can we do this? Is this acceptable?

[Ira Parker]

Look, there actually is a lot, and one that's just a function of being at hbo. They are very much artist first and they trust their artists. It's the best place to work in television, I think, in my opinion at the moment. But of course, this is the biggest franchise that they have and you don't want it to go off the rails. And we were certain we weren't going to do that because obviously this is George's novella. The underlying material is just so lovely that we all agree that we wanted to follow that roadmap, that the story is the story, the beginning is the beginning, the middle the middle, the end is the end. And we're just filling it out. We're filling it out with characters that you just see little snippets of in the novella. And we get to spend more time with them. We get to meet a little bit more of Duncan Egg, our two knight and squire in this story, who we're following. And we get to sit down and just actually hang out in Westeros. Have a little fun in Westeros, which you normally don't get to do when the stakes are so high every single moment.

[Peter Kafka]

So how. How much of. And you've mentioned that this is smaller scale and. And sort of reduced stakes and more of a hangout. And that's the point of the novellas George R.R. martin wrote, or he didn't write it for that reason, but he wrote those stories. How much of the idea of reducing the scale and presumably the cost goes into your thinking and HBO's thinking about

[Ira Parker]

this show a lot, probably priority number one.

[Peter Kafka]

Yeah. Make it cheaper.

[Ira Parker]

Oh, yes. Yes, very much so. Which at the beginning was quite daunting, I'd say. We probably have about a quarter of the amount of money that a minute of Westeros television costs.

[Peter Kafka]

And you're making shorter episodes too, right? Those are normally. Previous epis seasons were an hour.

[Ira Parker]

That's right. And that's all factored into everything that we're trying to do. But it is tricky. It's. It's obviously, it's very period. It's. It's. It's 14th century, sensibly. It's. There's a lot of horses, there's a lot of mud. There's. Even. In our show, there's a lot of action. There's people hitting each other with big sticks. And we do this shit for real, you know, so it's. It gets very complicated. It costs a lot of time. And we also have. Our second lead is nine years old. And so you can't shoot. And you wouldn't want to shoot full days with somebody that age because they still need to go to school half of the day and they still need to have a life and be a normal human being. And so that slows everything down. And obviously that costs more money. So to do this for that budget was very tricky until I think what we all really took on here was to make this show a reflection of its lead character, which is Dunk Sir Duncan the tall, this scrappy kid from Flea Bottom, from the slums of King's Landing. He is, in himself a little simpler. He is himself unpolished. He's gritty, and he's certainly imperfect. And so that became the look of the show that informed everything from the cinematography to the music to how we shoot our action sequences. I suppose it has even maybe a little bit of an indie feel to it. You know, the speed at which we had to work and the vibe of this following one person cutting from dunk to dunk.

[Peter Kafka]

So it looks premium when you watch it. You don't watch it thinking, oh, this is a cheap Game of Thrones show. So behind the scenes, what are you. When you're making something, a Game of Thrones show for 25% of the cost of Game of Thrones, what are you going without? What are you not putting in that a traditional show would have on screen? And behind the scenes, what are things that you have to give up to make it at that cost?

[Ira Parker]

The biggest thing is, you know, shooting five pages in a day when you want to be shooting two and a half, having to work a little quicker. And that puts a lot of pressure on your actors. It puts a lot of pressure on your crew. Everybody has to be getting it right very quickly. And obviously, that was a huge reason why we went back to Belfast, which is the institutional memory there. I mean, that is Belfast is Westeros. So many people on our show that are crew, that are heads of department now came up in all eight seasons. And so they know what this requires, they know how to do it. And that made us a lot more efficient casting. Look, we are so lucky to get Peter Claffey, a former professional rugby player, because there's just a certain level of intensity and work.

[Peter Kafka]

This is the lead of your show.

[Ira Parker]

Yes, the lead of our show.

[Peter Kafka]

Big honking dude.

[Ira Parker]

Yes. He's such a great leader and he's such a hard, hard worker that he inspires everybody else around him. And I don't think we would have gotten this done any other way.

[Peter Kafka]

So you have to go faster. I didn't see any dragons in the episodes.

[Ira Parker]

A lot less vfx. And. And that was very intentional, too. We wanted to be earthy. We wanted to be, you know, give what the land, you know, supplied us. And so. So that certainly is. Takes a big chunk of money out there, you know, little things that. It's texture in the scenes. It's, you know, you want to have so much life. You want to have animals in and around there. You want to have just all the little details that you just don't have a chance to sort of stop and make sure to get it perfect. It's just it. It falls to the background unless you highlight, unless you're very intentional. So there's a lot of planning that goes into doing a show like this. We can't just shoot from the hip every day. We have to know exactly how we're going to get it. Otherwise we lose. We lose all that detail, we lose all that texture.

[Peter Kafka]

We'll be right back. But First, a word from a sponsor.

[Kathleen Hennessey]

After decapitation strikes against Iran's leadership, what can we expect next in the escalating war?

[Ira Parker]

The big question is, if there is

[Kathleen Hennessey]

going to be a next strongman in

[Ira Parker]

Iran, what kind of strongman will that person likely be? I don't think that there's going to be another powerful cleric supreme leader.

[Kathleen Hennessey]

I'm John Finer.

[Henry Blodgett]

And I'm Jake Sullivan. And we're the hosts of the Long Game, a weekly national security podcast.

[Kathleen Hennessey]

This week we sit down with Kareem Sajapour to discuss what to expect in this next phase of the war against Iran.

[Henry Blodgett]

The episode's out now. Search for and follow the Long Game wherever you get your podcasts.

[Kara Swisher]

Hi, this is Kara Swisher, and this week on my podcast on with Kara Swisher, I talk to California Governor Gavin Newsom. While he hasn't officially announced or run for president yet, he, he's telegraphing it all the time. It's exhausting. He's also got a new book out, which is what you do when you're running for president. It's called Young man in a Hurry. I recently interviewed him live in San Francisco. Have a listen.

[Henry Blodgett]

The problem with the Democratic Party so often is we appear weak and we've got to be stronger and we've got

[Peter Kafka]

to be more assertive.

[John Finer]

And so that's, you know, it's the

[Henry Blodgett]

spirit, I think, that is required of this moment.

[Kara Swisher]

I've known Gavin Newsom since he was mayor of San Francisco a million years ago, a million hair gels ago, and he's a really interesting and compelling politician. He's done a lot of things in his career, and this one, this run for presidency which is going to happen, is among the most interesting. You can find a full conversation wherever you get your podcast and on YouTube, obviously. Be sure to follow and subscribe to on with Kara Swisher for more.

[John Finer]

This is what President Trump had to say about why the United States is at war with Iran.

[Peter Kafka]

We saw it repeatedly to make a deal. We tried. They wanted to do it, they didn't want to do it again. They wanted to do it, they didn't want to do it. They didn't know what was happening.

[John Finer]

Not the best explanation for a war of choice, sir. I'm personally a do my own research kind of guy, but let's ask AI why we're at war with Iran chat. The United States attacked Iran in 2026 because it claimed Iran posed an imminent threat to particularly due to Iran's advancing nuclear program and missile capabilities. And aim to reduce Iran's ability to project power in the region.

[Ira Parker]

Wow.

[Peter Kafka]

That.

[John Finer]

That was a better explanation. Thanks Chat Fitting that AI was more clear than the President of the United States because it turns out the United States is using AI to fight the war in Iran. The future of war is AI and that future is now. Here you can find out whether or not you should be freaking out over in the Today explained feed.

[Peter Kafka]

And we're back. What do you think the audience expectation is when they come to a Game of Thrones show? Do you think they're going to go, where are the dragons? Where's the giant battles between huge armies and armies of the undead? Or do you think they don't have that expectation?

[Ira Parker]

I think they do have that expectation. I would say the people who have read this novella, who know what to expect are very, very, very small percentage of this worldwide audience now. And I don't know what it is that that audience connected with. I think it would be foolish of me to say that I did. The truth is, is there's a lot of weird Game of Thrones without all the stuff. But what we do have is we have a lot of heart. We have some good horses, we have some nice landscapes, and we have, there is a certain level of, I don't know, a love that bleeds through the screen onto people. Hopefully that will become apparent. We do have one of, in my opinion, the best fucking battle that's ever been done in Game of Thrones or in this universe or maybe anywhere on television. So we do give you that there's not a lot of magic in our world, but hopefully we are the Hound in Aria, the TV show. We are Brienne and Pod the TV show. And, and there's an odd couple pairings that George does so well. That's hopefully that's what people connect with as well.

[Peter Kafka]

There's humor in this too. I mean, Game of Thrones had humor like you mentioned, but this, this has more of it. And a lot of it's kind of aimed at my 8 year old brain. Right? Like there's a poop joke in the first episode. There's a crazy anatomical sight gag in the beginning of the second episode. Was that intentional on your part? Was that part of the novellas or that's something you intentionally wanted to highlight?

[Ira Parker]

No, look again, it all comes back to Dunk's. Pov. And look, you put in three or four poop and fart jokes and that's all anyone wants to talk about. You know, there's a lot of jokes, a lot of, you know, hopefully the comedy is also of a different level. You know, is. Look, Dunk is not like George R.R. martin's other underdog characters. He doesn't have that witty, that clever wittiness to him. His humor comes from his awkwardness and his humor also comes from the fact that he is quite low board and living in the shit in the mud. And we didn't want to shy away from that. We didn't want to shy away from the reality. We didn't want to clean him up too much. We didn't want to feel like we were living in the polished halls of the Red Key. Petty boar.

[Peter Kafka]

So you. There is spectacle, right? And this is. You say it's an indie movie, but it's.

[Kathleen Hennessey]

It's.

[Peter Kafka]

This is not like we're watching Jim Jarmusch or something. This is. There's still people fighting each other. And I've watched the first two. The second episode ends with a big jousting scene. That's great. I was assuming that it was mostly real horses and real people. How do you plot through? Sort of. We're going to spend a lot of time and money on this set piece versus something else. I'm assuming you can only do that a version of that joust a couple times during the season. I'm assuming it takes an enormous amount of effort and money.

[Ira Parker]

It does. And man, we managed to get so much of it. We have, I mean, honestly, some of the best horse riders and stunt people in the entire world working on this show who are just absolute legends and do this, have done this all their lives. And we are the benefits of this, the beneficiaries of this. It is. I don't know how they got done as much as they did, but episode three, there's more jousting. I think some really cool, great fun. Brutal as well. Then episode four, things started really to kick off. It starts to get a little bit more tense. The Game of Thrones that we know and five is our big return to a fight. Hopefully that will be very impressive to people. It's different than what we've seen before, but hopefully equally as compelling and appropriate for our show.

[Peter Kafka]

So you've already told me that you're gonna. You're making the. The second season of this. George R.R. martin wrote a series of novellas. Is. Is this something where you can do as many of these series as there are novellas, or can you. Can you go beyond that at some point? This. This is set prior to Game of Thrones. Do you have to stop at some point? Because it's gonna bump into the Game of Thrones timeline or can you go indefinitely?

[Ira Parker]

Look, the truth is that George has outlined, I think, probably about 10 or 12 of these, and there are three novellas in existence right now. And so. And it takes them through their entire lives. What I would love to do, and I always pitch to HBO to eye rolls, which is that I'd love to do four of these right now at the beginning of their lives, come back in 10 years and do four more in the middle of their lives just with you. Dexter and Peter have gone off and had careers and done that. Then we come back and we do a couple more of these. Then 10 years from then come back and do, you know, the final four at the end of their lives. I think it's a really incredible journey. It's a really wonderful story of not just friendship, but it's. It's. They're. They're brothers, but they're also teacher and student. But it flows both ways, too. And it's. It's. It's what everybody hopes for in their life is to have somebody like that who you go through this much with and, you know, means so much to you. So I really do hope that we get to continue with these stories. I hope George keeps writing, but we'll see. If we end up doing just three of these, then that would be. That would be great, too.

[Peter Kafka]

What's more intimidating? Starting because you've been writing and producing for a long time, starting with a blank page where you've got to generate the story 100% on your own, or working with something created by one of the most sort of acclaimed creators of the last several decades. And all the pressure that comes with that.

[Ira Parker]

Definitely more intimidating, the blank page. It's nice to be given a roadmap by a living legend. I can't imagine anyone would not want to be so lucky. And to be able to fill out his world and write within that world has been a very wonderfully creative partnership between me and George. I get to say everything that I want to say, and I get to enjoy having these major tent poles set up. Things that hopefully a worldwide audience has already decided. Okay, this is good. This is a story we have approved of. Then I can just go in and have fun.

[Peter Kafka]

Ira, you've got a full agenda. I'm gonna let you get back to it and eventually, I guess, get back to Belfast and keep working on season two. Thanks for your time.

[Ira Parker]

Of course. Thank you very much.

[Peter Kafka]

Thanks again to Ira Parker and Kathleen Hennessey. Thanks to my producer, Charlotte Silver, our advertisers. And to you guys. See you soon.