'Game of Thrones': HBO sorry for George W Bush head on spike scene

Published Jun 14 2012, 09:57 BST  |  By Mayer Nissim

HBO has apologised for a scene in Game of Thrones which appeared to depict George W Bush's head on a spike.

A prosthetic version of the 43rd president's severed head with a wig is visible in the first season finale of the medieval fantasy.



During the DVD commentary, showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss admitted: "George Bush's head appears in a couple of beheading scenes."

They added: "It's not a choice, it's not a political statement. We just had to use whatever head we had around."

Following the outcry over the scene, Benioff and Weiss said: "We use a lot of prosthetic body parts on the show: heads, arms, etc.

"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."

They added: "After the scene was already shot, someone pointed out that one of the heads looked like George W Bush.

"In the DVD commentary, we mentioned this, though we should not have. We meant no disrespect to the former President and apologise if anything we said or did suggested otherwise."

HBO added: "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 apologised immediately for this inadvertent careless mistake.

"We are sorry this happened and will have it removed from any future DVD production."

Watch the unedited scene in full below: