'Game of Thrones'
Executive producers and directors David Benioff (L) and Daniel Brett Weiss take part in the filming for Season 6 of HBO TV series "Game of Thrones'" northeast of Spain, Girona, September 3, 2015. Home Box Office Inc. is filming part of the sixth season of the American fantasy TV series in Girona. Reuters/Gustau Nacarino

In December 2015, director Jeremy Podeswa, who directed four “Game of Thrones” episodes, said that fan outrage had forced showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss to rethink the script for Season 6. It was revealed that the showrunners would be toning down sexual violence against women in “Game of Thrones” in the upcoming season 6.

[Spoiler Alert] In the Jeremy Podeswa-directed “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken” episode of “Game of Thrones” Season 5, Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon) raped Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) right after their wedding while Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen) was forced to watch. Critics and fans found the rape scene forced into the episode’s script simply to create shock among viewers.

“They were responsive to the discussion and there were a couple of things that changed as a result. They did not want to be too overly influenced by that [criticism], but they did absorb and take it in and it did influence them in a way,” Podeswa had said.

However, according to Entertainment Weekly, Weiss said none of it is true and not a single word in the “Game of Thrones” Season 6 script has been changed because of the outrage.

“I can literally say that not one word of the scripts this season have been changed in any way, shape or form by what people said on the Internet, or elsewhere,” Weiss said.

Weiss also added that he is not sure whether Podeswa’s words were shuffled to sound better and that he may have added something adjacent to those words. In short, Weiss has no clue about what Podeswa had said and he was absolutely sure that nothing has been changed in the Season 6 scripts.

“The thing that’s slightly frustrating is the idea that we’re responding to criticism from last year, so therefore we’re going to beef up the female roles – that’s blatantly untrue,” Benioff said.

He added that they decided female roles would be taking centre stage in Season 6 way before the criticisms surfaced.

“We can take criticism – and certainly we’ve gotten our share of it – but hearing people look at a middle chapter of a story and make claims about the story as a whole … it’s not in any way a response to online criticism, or any other type of criticism,” Benioff said.

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