Game of Thrones creators: "We’re not built to handle millions of opinions"
David Benioff and DB Weiss have learnt to deal with huge levels of scrutiny.
David Benioff and DB Weiss, the writers behind Game of Thrones, have opened up about the level of scrutiny they dealt with while working on the hit fantasy show – and how they've learnt to deal with it.
The duo have now turned their hand to their biggest project since Thrones, Netflix's 3 Body Problem, alongside writer Alexander Woo, and have told RadioTimes.com that "unplugging" so as they don't have to deal with "millions" of opinions is an essential part of the process now.
Benioff explained: "I think in the middle of the Thrones process, we realised that both for reasons of general productivity and mental health, that plugging into that isn't helpful. Trying to pay attention to what to what a million people or more are saying – we're not just built to handle that, we're not evolved to handle that.
"Making a show already involves having to pay very close attention to what dozens or hundreds of people are saying at any given time, and that's the job, and if you don't do that, you're not going to do the job very well.
"To try to do that while listening to millions of voices that are coming to you through your little black device of one kind or another, that's not helpful, at least in our minds.
"There might be people who are maybe more digitally native than we are, who grew up with it and it's just a part of the way they process the world, but it's not for us.
"So we've kind of chosen to unplug ourselves from from that side of things. It doesn't mean that you don't care what anybody thinks. On the contrary, we very much care what people think.
"And it doesn't mean that we don't want outside voices to help tell us how we're doing. We very much want that too.
"But the way you process the outside voices of the five people you show episode 2 and ask them 'Does this make sense?' is very different than the way you process what 10 million people think in 140 characters or less. I find the former to lend itself much better to doing good work and to having a good life than the latter."
All eyes are on how the pair fare with their new ambitious project, especially after the divisive reaction to Game of Thrones season 8 – but the reviews so far have praised the series, based on Cixin Liu's original novels, with Woo revealing that the author actually approved all the major changes they made from the beginning.
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He told RadioTimes.com: "He knew that adaptations would have to be made, he recognised that some of the male characters might be better served being female and he recognised that, because we were doing the English language adaptation, there would also be changes made in terms of setting and characters.
"The opportunity that it afforded us was that was that we could tell a story about humanity facing a global existential threat from an extraterrestrial civilisation, and if we're going to represent humanity, we should represent all of humanity.
The series follows a tight-knit group of scientists who see the laws of nature stop making sense around them – before they're faced with a terrifying and unknowable threat.
It also stars various Game of Thrones alumni, including John Bradley, Liam Cunningham, and Jonathan Pryce.
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3 Body Problem is available to stream now on Netflix. Sign up for Netflix from £4.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.
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