Former President George W. Bush Beheaded In 'Game Of Thrones'
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork.com) -- HBO's hit show "Game Of Thrones" is known for its unflinching violence, sexual content and magic.
But now its creators find themselves having some explaining to do after they revealed that one of the many decapitated heads that appeared on a stake in the show is former President George W. Bush.
David Benioff and D.B. Weiss explained as much during the DVD commentary of season 1, episode 10.
The former president's head appears near the end of Season 1 when the character King Joffrey takes Sansa Stark out to see the spiked heads of his enemies, including someone special to her.
"The last head on the left is George Bush," says one of the creators.
"George Bush's head appears in a couple of beheading scenes," says the other.
"It's not a choice, it's not a political statement, we just used whatever heads we had around."
HBO responded to CBSNewYork.com's request for comment on Wednesday night, offering the following statement from Benioff and Weiss:
"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. 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."
You can hear the clip in question by clicking here. The image appears below.
HBO issued the following statement as well:
"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. We are sorry this happened and will have it removed from any future DVD production."
The disclosure comes as the network plans to air a documentary about George W. Bush's father George H. W. Bush Thursday night.
What do you think of the using the former president's head in the scene? They say it wasn't political - do you believe them? Sound off in our comments section below.
