You might think that it’s not a big deal when a movie or a TV show drops the découpage ball, but when you’ve spent the last eight years building an immersive fictional fantasy realm called Westeros, having a Starbucks coffee cup nonchalantly appear on a table can really put a dent into that whole suspension-of-disbelief factor.
The Starbucks fiasco afflicting the final season of Game of Thrones has traumatized HBO so much that they apparently took extra vigilance when filming House of the Dragon to make sure that it remains a thing of the past. That’s according to showrunner Ryan Condal, who recently told The Hollywood Reporter they worked on a “very heavily policed set — there was lots of Starbucks hunting going on.”
Of course, that doesn’t mean the crew didn’t have fun with it. “We always joked around about it, that we were going to make Starbucks goblets so at least they fit in the scene,” Condal adds.
Even director Miguel Sapochnik got in on the fun, joking that he tried to put coffee cups everywhere so that they could digitally remove them in post-production. He also issued a challenge to viewers, saying that if they recognize even one instance where they’ve removed a cup, they’ll get a prize. The prize, as you can expect, will be a cup of coffee.
Personally, I think the Starbucks cup is a bit outdated at this point. What you want is a Big Mac, or at least its wrapping, lying around somewhere as the king and his Small Council sit through a tourney. Better yet, camouflage it in a banquet, and live out the meme.
House of the Dragon is slated for premiere on Aug. 21.