Beauty and the Beast: George RR Martin Recalls Writing the CBS Series

Before Game of Thrones, George RR Martin helped create the love story of Vincent and Catherine for Beauty and the Beast. That is where his career began. With the new Beauty and the Beast film arriving in theaters over the weekend, The Hollywood Reporter sat down with the writer to talk about writing the drama.

Martin said the following about writing the CBS drama and its cult status 30 years later:

“It was such a literate show and such a smart show. Vincent may have been a Beast but he was highly read and always fond of quoting poetry and citing Shakespeare and dropping in a sonnet from one poet or another. That had an enormous effect. We would get letters from librarians across the country about all the people who would come into the libraries on Monday after we’d aired on Friday saying, “What was that poem Vincent read?” They were going back to Shakespeare.

I was able to do an episode called “Ozymandias” where we had Ron Perlman read the entirety of the poem by Shelley. To be able to do that kind of thing was amazing, to work in some of the classics of English literature that way. Vincent was an intellectual who loved words and stories and poems. He was not by that reason like a geek or a figure the other characters made fun of but was in fact a classic, Romantic, Byronic hero. Being able to bring that to television to a mass audience was great.”

Martin also spoke about writing for the cast and the current connection one cast member has with Game of Thrones. He said:

“We had an amazing cast to write for. Certainly Linda Hamilton is a wonderful actress. Roy Dotrice, who played Father, has done all the narration on the Game of Thrones audiobooks. He’s a fantastic actor. And of course Ron Perlman. Working with Ron Perlman was one of the great pleasures of my life. He was just a joy to write for.”

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