Valyrian steel couldn’t cut through the crowd that thronged Radio City Music Hall last night for the premiere of the eighth and final season of “Game of Thrones.”
Dozens of cast members walked a blood-red carpet through Rockefeller Center, near a 35-foot-high replica of the show’s Iron Throne. With every star’s arrival, a great noise went up from the waiting fans, like a roar from the Colosseum.
Emilia Clarke, who plays Daenerys Targaryen (a.k.a. the Mother of Dragons), floated down the carpet in a wispy cloud of gray tulle. “It’s so fun, isn’t it?” she said of her Valentino gown. “Go hard or go home.” The gown was a step up from her character’s warrior-queen wardrobe, which typically involves “not a lot of fabric, and a lot of corsets,” she said.
Was she ever concerned about the amount of flesh on the series, or its violence? “No! Just look at Shakespeare, baby,” Ms. Clarke said.
Pilou Asbaek, who plays the villain Euron Greyjoy, also invoked the bard. The show is “a pop culture phenomenon,” he said. “It’s about power, it’s about sex, it’s universal. It’s the reason why we still play Shakespeare throughout the world.”
But is the writing as good? “Shakespeare was a genius,” Mr. Asbaek said. “But Martin wrote some books that are up there.”
George R.R. Martin, who wrote the books that spawned the series, did not dispute the comparison. “Sure,” he said. “It’s incredibly arrogant and vain, but what the hell. I didn’t say it, they did.”
He was surrounded by the show’s cast: Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister); Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister); Maisie Williams (Arya Stark); Alfie Allen (Theon Greyjoy); Jacob Anderson (Grey Worm); Gwendoline Christie (Brienne of Tarth); Charles Dance (Tywin Lannister); Jonathan Pryce (High Sparrow); Jack Gleeson (Joffrey Baratheon); and Pedro Pascal (Oberyn Martell), who is in an actual Shakespeare production, “King Lear,” three blocks away.
Kit Harington, who plays Jon Snow, trotted down the carpet last of all. He paused only for the cameras, not the notepads. (Lena Headey, who plays Cersei Lannister, took to Instagram to explain she was too ill to attend.)
After a screening of the lavish first episode, guests schlepped to the Ziegfeld Ballroom for a fire-themed after-party.
There, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the show’s creators, mixed with Jeff Zucker, the CNN boss; Robert Greenblatt, the new head of HBO; and John Stankey, the Warner Media chief executive. (Richard Plepler, the recently departed HBO chief executive, who greenlit the series, went to the screening but skipped the after-party.)
In a testament to the show’s wide appeal, other boldfaced names at the party included Emily Mortimer, Dave Chappelle, Keegan-Michael Key, Ethan Hawke, Debbie Harry, Thomas Middleditch, Lorne Michaels, Sarah Paulson, Michelle Wolf, Nikki Haskell and Justin Vivian Bond.
Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark) escorted her fiancé, Joe Jonas, while Jason Momoa (Khal Drogo) attended with his wife, Lisa Bonet.
“Aquaman!” said Mr. Martin, who came over to give Mr. Momoa a hug.
The party broke up around 11 p.m., as die-hard fans waited behind police barriers to catch glimpses of their idols. Cheers turned to boos when Ms. Clarke declined to cross the street to greet them.
Apparently, the queen’s patience has its limits. “Oh, shut up,” she said, as she stepped into her S.U.V.
