Game of Thrones is constantly at war with fans over leaks. Fans will sift through anything to find hints about what happens in the next season, right down to the length of Kit Harrington’s hair. Under the pressure of such relentless analysis, the production team has tightened up the ship even more, to the point where the cast can’t even print scripts.
Nathalie Emmanuel, better known as Daenerys’ friend Missandei, revealed that, for season seven, the cast not only needed to enable two-factor authentication for their emails so they wouldn’t be hacked, but that they also couldn’t print out any script they received. Also, any notes they were given in rehearsal couldn’t leave the set and had to be signed out like library books, and returned before they left the set.
The caution makes sense. Before, the show stuck close enough to the book that fans could pretty much piece together what was happening season by season by reading them. But now, the staff is ahead of George R.R. Martin’s novels, so they have to keep things as tight as they can. Of course, the internet being what it is, the whole thing has probably leaked anyway. But we’ll find out when the show returns July 16th.