The actors appear to have come out of the woodwork with various responses from liking it to diplomatic (but not liking it) to straight up admitting not liking it. See Nikolaj Coster-Waldau's interview here (transcribed below thanks to @Aegon):
"And I'd get into all these arguments and fights with the writers and they're like "Yeah, we hear you." "Yeah but please, you have to ba-bi-ba..." And they go "Yeah, we hear you and we respect you, but we don't care. Ok, we don't.. (f***). You're an actor, just say the words." They didn't say it like that, but that was the gist.
And the funny thing is, we've gotten through these song-and-dance-routines every season since season 4, where I come back and I'm like "This doesn't make sense!""
There's also a couple of compilations of the actors reacting of which the below is one:
Pilou Asbaek, who plays Euron Greyjoy, has defended the season in an interview.
The episode was very divisive among fans, what was your reaction and the cast’s reaction to the twists, especially Daenerys’ decision to ignore the bells? And what did you think of the fans reaction?
First of all, the diversity of the fans and the passion they bring to the table is admirable, and you want to have all of it. You want to have the ones that go, “This is the greatest show ever made,” and you wanna have the people that go, “I hate this show. I’ve always hated it. I want the books now.” You cannot satisfy one billion people, it’s not possible. But you want to have them commit to the show, even if they don’t like it. There was a guy called P.T. Barnum who said “There’s no such thing as bad press, there’s only press.” And I welcome everyone, people I agree with or people I disagree with. And I have on social media been discussing “Game of Thrones” with fans and I will continue to do that, because you owe the fans information and they need a place where they can ask questions about what they like or dislike and it’s totally cool, it’s passionate. And you’ve gotta love that. Besides that, for me, the twists and turns was logical, because this is “Game of Thrones,” and people have to die. And I would be very, very surprised if we end up with a happy ending next week. I know how it’s gonna end, so I’m not gonna say a word. But Dan and David have delivered for seven seasons admirable content and I would say they have delivered extremely well again this season. But again, you can’t please everyone.
The Wrap, ‘Game of Thrones': Euron Actor Pilou Asbaek on Why a ‘Very Important’ Scene Wasn’t Shown on Screen
As far as I know the writers and/or directors have yet to comment.
