Game of Thrones is facing a backlash from furious fans over its intervention in the refugee crisis, which has seen its stars indirectly lobby governments to settle hundreds of thousands of migrants.
Viewers are criticizing the HBO series over a major campaign ahead of its launch on on April 24.
The deal sees it link up with the International Rescue Committee, which is pushing governments around the world to relocate migrants by the hundreds of thousands to Western countries.
Fans were tempted to hand over cash to the IRC, with a chance to attend the Season 6 premiere in LA recently, where the winner took selfies with the stars.
But the prize, touted in social media posts beamed out to Game of Thrones’ 17 million fans, was met with a harsh response.
The monochrome shorts feature stars like Lena Headey (who plays Cersei Lannister), Maisie Williams (Arya Stark), Nikolai Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) and others soliciting donations over plaintive piano music.
It is quite the turnaround from characters we are used to seeing display utter ruthlessness. And the fans hate it.
On Facebook, the video’s top-rated comment says bluntly: “Keep the real-world politics out of Game of Thrones”.
Nobody in the videos says so, but the actors are soliciting cash for very specific political goals.
The IRC is pressing the US Government to accept 100,000 migrants – ten times its current commitment. In Europe, it wants 540,000 migrants resettled by 2021.
A fan from Sweden, which alongside Germany is under most pressure from an influx of migrants, said: “Easy to tell people what to do when you are rich and live in gated communities. The migrant crisis is out of control in Europe”.
On YouTube, the video has more than three “dislike” votes for every “like”.
The IRC admits killing the video’s comment feed after too many fans criticized them.
Others have questioned the stars’ commitment to the cause, and understanding of the issues.
One said: “So many liberal social justice warriors speak about things they have only seen on TV and have not experienced first-hand.”
Another suggested: “If they want to help the refugees then take them in their own homes and donate their paychecks. Meanwhile in America and elsewhere we have our own problems.”
Heat Street contacted all the actors who appeared in the video, but none took up an offer to explain their support.
A spokesman for the IRC suggested that only a minority of fans object to the campaign, which he called “saddening”.
But the reaction – much of it from European fans on the “migrant trail” from Syria to Germany – is now very much part of a new political mainstream.
In countries like Sweden and Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel ushered in more than a million migrants in a matter of months, tensions have sky-rocketed.
Anti-migrant parties in Europe have surged in the polls, and in the US a commitment to take in even 10,000 refugees prompted a majority of state governors to flat out refuse.
Perhaps the actors are not aware of what they have signed up for. IRC’s promotional material is more about emergency blankets than the hard resettlement targets which it is nonetheless pursuing.
An HBO executive told Heat Street the campaign was meant to “go above the political debate” and that they had no “substantive” policy goals.
But fans who donated will have their money spent on the contentious work of persuading the world’s governments to go over the heads of their citizens and import people en masse from the Middle East to the West.
So far HBO has raised around $260,000 for the IRC – a hefty sum, but a drop in the ocean compared with Game of Thrones’ own enormous budgets.
With the company now racking up a $10million bill for every 55-minute show, the IRC war chest so far would pay for some 85 seconds of screen-time.
The contentious campaign continues a pattern of Left-leaning stars advocating political change which will likely affect their fans far more than them.
Pop star Bob Geldof and actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Jude Law are among those to tread a similar path.
Despite the efforts of the entertainment elite, the policies in Europe and the US and have changed little.
And, for all the resentment the campaign has caused, it actually comes in a lull period in the migrant crisis.
At the end of each year the number of migrants on the move plunges amid cold weather and rough seas – but warmer months bring a fresh surge, and renewed sense of crisis.
In the fictional world of Westeros, little is more terrifying than the onset of winter.
But GoT stars who’ve thrown their weight behind the open borders lobby have the opposite problem: summer is coming.