Production
Writing
"The Red Woman" was written by the series' creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. Some elements in the episode are based on the sixth novel in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, The Winds of Winter , which author George R. R. Martin had hoped to have completed before the sixth season began airing. [1] It also contains elements from the chapters "The Sacrifice" and "The Blind Girl" from A Dance with Dragons . [2] With this episode, Jonathan Pryce (High Sparrow) is promoted to series regular. The episode has the introduction of new recurring cast member Joe Naufahu, who plays Khal Moro. [3] It was the first episode followed by After the Thrones , HBO's after-show hosted by Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan. [4] The episode had a premiere at the TCL Chinese Theatre two weeks before the premier of the episode on HBO. [5] There was a lot of speculation prior to the episode regarding whether the character Jon Snow would remain dead or return to life. Fans speculated that Melisandre would be the one to bring back Snow to life, after and before the title of the first episode was revealed to be "The Red Woman". [6]
Liam Cunningham, who portrays Davos Seaworth, spoke about the writing of the episode following its airing, and revealed how he reacted to the scene, saying "It was initially shocking. You know what I thought was my favorite bit, and I said it to David and Dan, it was at that moment when the reveal comes and you kind of go, 'Oh my God,' it puts things into context with Melisandre. It doesn't explain or blah, blah, blah. … It's confirmed like, she's a witch, but there was such a touch of humanity. When she went to the bed and got into the bed and covered herself up… it was like a really striking moment in this weird madness of humanity." [7]
John Bradley, who portrays Samwell Tarly, also spoke about the scene, saying "And what I like about that, and seeing her like that is you know then that her sexuality over the course of the last few seasons, we've seen her use as such a tool -- that's all very deliberate. She presents herself in this way as this beautiful woman because she knows the effect that that can have on people. She knows the effect that that has on Stannis, and that can make men do unadvisable things. So the fact that she did that and she uses that power in that way to have this influence on people. That puts her into context as somebody who really does know what she's doing." [7]
Filming
"The Red Woman" was directed by Jeremy Podeswa. Podeswa previously directed the fifth season episodes "Kill the Boy" and "Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken", the latter of which received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series. [8] [9] The budget for the sixth season increased compared to the previous seasons as each episode had an average cost of over $10 million, totaling approximately $100 million for the full season, setting a new high for the series. [10]
For the closing reveal involving Melisandre, the director of the episode stated that a similar technique to the body double of Cersei Lannister in "Mother's Mercy" was used, with Carice van Houten wearing prosthetic makeup for the face that was then transposed onto the real body of an old woman. Podeswa stated, "The idea is there's an indefinite indeterminate quality that she could be ancient. We were limited by choosing to use a real person rather than a complete [computer generated] creation. Because what does a 400-year-old person look like? We don't know. So if you try to create that, then you're creating something that looks beyond our known reality. Here you feel like she's very old without putting a number on it." [11]
