Filming this episode required 55 nights and an unknown number of day shoots on stages, with roughly 750 cast and crew members. Several actors described this episode as the hardest thing they ever filmed.
Maisie Williams stated in Entertainment Weekly, "Nothing can prepare you for how physically draining it is. It's night after night, and again and again, and it just doesn't stop. You can't get sick, and you have to look out for yourself because there's so much to do that nobody else can do... there are moments you're just broken as a human and just want to cry."
Iain Glen (Jorah Mormont) described it as a "real test, really miserable. You get to sleep at seven in the morning and when you wake in the midday you are still so spent you can't really do anything, and then you're back. You have no life outside it."
Rory McCann (The Hound) concurred: "Everybody prays they never have to do this again."
