"Game of Thrones" creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss apologized for putting a prosthetic head of President George W. Bush on a spike, hours after news that their show had done so hit the internet.
In apologizing, the show-runners gave an explanation, if you can call it that, having to do with needing heads-on-spikes in bulk:
"We use a lot of prosthetic body parts on the show: heads, arms, etc." Benioff and Weiss said. "We can't afford to have these all made from scratch, especially in scenes where we need a lot of them, so we rent them in bulk. After the scene was already shot, someone pointed out that one of the heads looked like George W. Bush."
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They went on: "In the DVD commentary, we mentioned this, though we should not have. We meant no disrespect to the former President and apologize if anything we said or did suggested otherwise."
It emerged on Wednesday that in a DVD commentary for season 1, the show creators said that one of the many decapitated heads that appeared on "Game of Thrones" last season was a prop likeness of Bush.
"The last head on the left is George Bush," says Benioff, in the DVD commentary.
"George Bush's head appears in a couple beheading scenes," adds Weiss.
"It's not a choice, it's not a political statement," explains Benioff. "It's just, we had to use what heads we had around."
Also read: 'Game of Thrones' Put George W. Bush's Head on a Spike (Update)
HBO, which airs the bloody hit series, issued its own statement of apology:
"We were deeply dismayed to see this and find it unacceptable, disrespectful and in very bad taste. We made this clear to the executive producers of the series who apologized immediately for this inadvertent careless mistake. We are sorry this happened and will have it removed from any future DVD production."