Game Of Thrones: Why George R.R. Martin Turned Down Season 8 Cameo
The author has some more pressing matters to attend to.
George R.R. Martin was offered the chance to make a cameo appearance in the upcoming eighth and final season of Game of Thrones, but turned down the opportunity.
While Martin is the creator of A Song of Ice and Fire, upon which the series is based, and worked closely with showrunners Dan Weiss and David Benioff in its formative years, he's never actually made an appearance on the series. He DID film a cameo for the unaired pilot, where he was a guest at Daenerys' wedding, but didn't reshoot his scene when the entire thing was refilmed. With this the final season, it was his last chance to make a cameo, but he explained why he's not to EW:
"David and Dan invited me to a cameo in one of the final episodes, which I was tempted to do. But I didn’t think just for the sake of a cameo I could take the time to return to Belfast.”
Instead of travelling from New Mexico to Northern Ireland, Martin is going to focus on writing the long-awaited sixth chapter of ASOIAF, The Winds of Winter. He's previously admitted to struggling with it, and it's now been eight years since the fifth book was released. Game of Thrones will finish his own story before him, and we can but hope for The Winds of Winter and, eventually, A Dream of Spring to be released.