Publications
Partners
Los Angeles – HBO and the executive producers of Game Of Thrones owned up and apologised on Wednesday for showing a model of President George W Bush's head appearing on a spike in season 1 of the fantasy TV series, reports The Hollywood Reporter.
The scene, which shows a model in the likeness of the severed head of Bush on a spike, appears in the season finale where King Joffrey Baratheon (Jack Gleeson) forces Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) to look at the severed head of her father Lord Eddard Stark (Sean Bean).
In the DVD commentary, showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss acknowledged the likeness of the head to America's 43rd president and added that "we just had to use whatever head we had around".
'We rent them in bulk'
On Wednesday HBO apologised in a statement: "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 apologised immediately for this inadvertent careless mistake. We are sorry this happened and will have it removed from any future DVD production."
Producers Benioff and Weiss also apologised via their own statement, saying: "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.
"In the DVD commentary, we mentioned this, though we should not have. We meant no disrespect to the former President and apologise if anything we said or did suggested otherwise," they said.
Watch the scene from Game Of Thrones with the commentary here:
The scene, which shows a model in the likeness of the severed head of Bush on a spike, appears in the season finale where King Joffrey Baratheon (Jack Gleeson) forces Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) to look at the severed head of her father Lord Eddard Stark (Sean Bean).
In the DVD commentary, showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss acknowledged the likeness of the head to America's 43rd president and added that "we just had to use whatever head we had around".
'We rent them in bulk'
On Wednesday HBO apologised in a statement: "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 apologised immediately for this inadvertent careless mistake. We are sorry this happened and will have it removed from any future DVD production."
Producers Benioff and Weiss also apologised via their own statement, saying: "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.
"In the DVD commentary, we mentioned this, though we should not have. We meant no disrespect to the former President and apologise if anything we said or did suggested otherwise," they said.
Watch the scene from Game Of Thrones with the commentary here:
