You may have been aware of the release of James Hibberd’s book Fire Cannot Kill A Dragon which was released October 2020 — or so said the sticker on my library book. I had checked it out knowing that Rory would be mentioned in it and was excited to see if there was anything I hadn’t read previously.
Nope. Oh, well.
For anyone who hasn’t seen any GOT-related interviews before or just wants a hard copy of them, this is your book. To those of us who’ve seen or read some or all of these interviews, this book wasn’t so much written as it was cobbled together from those same interviews. Yep. He took his own previously-existing stuff and put it all together in a hardcover binding. He added some newer bits as well that I can’t find via Google so I’m guessing he wrote them in the process of putting the book together.
But here’s what I could find, and sometimes some additional material that supports what’s in the book but isn’t in there. In case this is ever released in paperback or another edition, please note these pages are from the initial hardcover release.
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p. 26
I am not going to look up David and Dan, but here is George R. R. Martin’s reasoning for why he wanted Rory in the role (the story of how he pointed Rory out to David and Dan is in the book). At some point I will mirror that here.
p. 61
Can’t bring up Aidan Gillan’s bit about being mortified that he got Rory’s lines telling the Hound’s story to Sansa, but that little tidbit is all that was really new to me. I already knew he told the Hound’s story. It’s not really about Rory anyway.
Rory relates how they told him he wouldn’t be giving Sansa that story here.
p. 176
There’s a bit about Bryan Cogman talking about Rory having difficulty with the Hound role until David Nutter sat him down and talked with him. I can’t find that interview, but here’s David Nutter in his own words:
‘Game of Thrones’ Director on Ghost’s Departure and Brienne’s Collapse [Excerpt]
Then Rory talks about how he realized he doesn’t have to play scary all the time — see “What’s the scene you’re most proud of?”:
The Hound actor Rory McCann breaks down that Game of Thrones Cleganebowl fight
p. 177
The “I’m very close to being the Hound” is also at the previous link (Cleganebowl) under “So why have you kept to yourself so much?”
I can’t find any of the specific stuff said about Rory’s prosthetic but we’ve all heard that one before, from both his hot-weather and cold-weather filmings.
Maisie’s statement about Rory going from page 177 to 178 is also at the end of the previous link (Cleganebowl), added on at the end in a sort of postscript.
p. 179
More Bryan Cogman that I can’t find.
Here’s the thing from Gwendoline Christie. I could mirror it here, but I’ll have to think about that some more. In the book it goes all the way to page 180.
p. 298
This is the infamous story from behind the scenes about Ian McShane not liking his burger, punting it with his foot, and hitting Rory in the head with it. Actually, I have not added any of those stories to the articles page yet. I will do that at some point. Suffice to say it started out being about McShane bouncing a burger off McCann’s head and ended up, after several retellings, claiming that this actually started some kind of bad feeling or argument or fight between Ian and Rory. It was pretty stupid.
pp. 414-415
Can’t find Hafþór Björnsson’s bit about what it was like in Cleganebowl from his side, but he and the crewmember who follows him in the story both have high praise for Rory (the crewmember says, “Rory saved the day”).
Rory’s bit is from the Cleganebowl story two links ago (look back up the page) under “What did you think of the scripts this year?”
And that’s basically it. Like I said, you may still want to buy the book for whatever other reason, but there honestly wasn’t a lot that was new.