Original subtitles

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS) ♪

It was incredible. It was really otherworldly.

We just shot the hell out of it. So we were, uh, really happy.

I've got to say, actually, probably that was one of my favorite scenes to shoot.

We're honoring the original show, obviously.

It's one of my favorite little secrets.

They were night shoots, so they were quite difficult,

but it was very fun.

It's more of their Blackwater pleasure yacht sailing vessel.

It's not something that they would probably take out in the open sea.

But they spend a lot of time sailing the Blackwater

because they go to Driftmark and Dragonstone,

the two popular houses,

so they need this fast ship that can kinda go back and forth between.

But it was exciting, you know, to build that.

I think there is a lot of naval presence in this series.

But it was a unique set to build.

And it's one of those things where you hear they're building a ship on the back lot,

and then you actually go and see,

"Oh, they actually built a ship on the back lot."

The flagship was a lot of fun.

I think Clare had a lot of fun shooting that.

It's the weirdest thing to be involved in,

designing all these different sets.

This was a lovely opportunity because on Game of Thrones,

we're always using kind of, like, the same ship

for various different things through a lot of the seasons.

So this was a chance to sort of come up with a different ship design.

It needed to look quite grand and royal,

but it's not, like, a massive ship.

It's just something they use for touring.

So, only the bit that people had to actually stand on was built.

Everything else is gonna be us, so it's--

it's, uh, probably only a third of the actual size of the real ship.

The set was beautiful.

VFX was really prepared for the extensions,

or, you know, what kind of shots do we wanna do,

and how-- what was the best way to achieve them?

Ready. And action.

We shot on the Targaryen flagship.

We storyboarded it to quite a high degree.

We sort of worked out every single shot,

what that would be.

And then we pretty much built a 360-degree blue screen around it.

We worked out that we wanted to give a slight movement with the camera.

We found just the right sort of degrees

to get the sense of the boat moving and wind.

We had this incredible special effect of this water just being thrown over the side.

So, you know, it's just a feat of coordination more than anything.

So, one of the dragons

sweeps the boat and tilts it over.

So everyone on the ship had to do a bit of, uh,

Star Trek back and forth.

Take cover!

RYAN J. CONDAL: I think you need to search for moments of levity

in making a show that is as grim and heavy, at times, as this is.

But the trick with that is that they have to be in tone with the show.

So it's finding-- it's finding a moment of levity in the darkness.

The castle is surrounded by a peat, dry moat.

The view across the marshes is inspiring.

We see her, and there's this, like, 70-year-old guy

talking about how the view's so great.

And she's like, "I'm not gonna--

I'm not gonna marry you. Like, stop."

Next!

And this kid comes up, so it kind of just feels like a big joke at this point.

It just feels like a big parade.

The Volume is brand new to me. Um, it's really interesting.

The first thing that hits you is how much better it is than blue screen.

Because the actors walk in,

and they feel that they are in this incredible environment.

And they're very excited by that

because it inspires them physically, emotionally.

It sort of gets to them,

and it helps them draw and bring out

their most playful work, in a way.

There are pros and cons about it, so I think you, um...

You know, I felt that it was good

to bring the elements in a little bit.

So we had--- we built in some wind,

had a lot of leaves blowing across the stage.

Because I felt it helps to sort of make it feel a more alive environment.

You know, you've got this 360 degrees that you can shoot against,

but it's important where you place the real pieces of the set.

'Cause you can't place them too close to the screens, for example.

And you can't really have people walking out through an exit.

So you have to, like, work that out.

Well, I wanted it a little bit more open

because she is there to get her husband.

I like the contrast between her personality and what she's wearing.

She's wearing things which are too old for her.

And it's very strange because with Milly,

there were some dresses where she felt very comfortable,

and some dresses where she felt a little bit more dressed for the part.

And that was excellent because that was meant to be.

That was a fun, sort of happy-go-lucky look.

It was, "I'm here, I'm not sure whether I want to be here,

I don't know whether I like these guys or not."

And it was just that sort of element

of slightly more blusher, slightly flushed.

All of those elements just to help her dealing with that scene.

The Blackwoods are an ancient house

with a formidable army.

Let us have the next.

- Craven.

Those two actors did an amazing job, actually, and we didn't double them.

And the fight changed a few times.

A few times, there were different ideas and what have you.

Um, and that's actually one of those scenes

when I read it, it didn't seem to make that much sense.

But actually, when you actually did it, it was actually quite funny.

Basically, this bully gets done. It's-- It's quite cool.

But the actors did so well.

They're hitting the ground without mats,

and they did it all day.

They did an amazing job.

It's just like, "Whoa, guys, calm down! Calm down.

No one needs to die. No one needs to die."

The godswood is an interesting set

'cause it's got that beautiful tree at the center of it.

And you can't help but want to shoot the actors by the tree.

But at the same time, you've gotta bring the changes.

So when we were there, we talked about, you know,

how we were gonna block the scene.

And eventually, we moved the scene to the table.

And Matt's, like, sat there with his feet up on the table and offering her wine.

And I think that blocking really helped it become a little bit more about--

You could see the subtext of that relationship

and the flirting that was going on.

It's such a lonely prospect.

It's quite liberating acting in a different language.

And I've enjoyed the learning of it

and working with the voice coach, who's fabulous.

If you speak any language,

your personality is sort of transposed into the language

in a different way, somehow.

And I find that with Daemon, it's quite interesting.

It was the language of Valyria,

and it has seeped, kind of like Latin did into Europe.

It seeped into certain parts of Westerosi societies.

But it's also the language of the Targaryen family.

You know, they all grew up learning it.

And they can switch into it when they're discussing

either things of sort of great importance

or when they just don't want other people to know what they're talking about.

Oh, no, there's, like, grammatical things going on here,

so it got a bit complicated.

But we got through it and we did it.

That set had to have a very fairy-tale quality.

It had to have a sort of, uh, Renaissance quality to it, a beauty to it.

We introduced frescos on some of the walls.

In my head, it was a Byzantine prayer space.

It was a Byzantine influence I tried to bring to that.

In the old stonework, the brickwork, and the tree as the centerpiece.

We've done trees before, so we know how to do 'em.

It's making sure you've got the right people to make it,

and we had some great sculptors.

We looked at what had been done previously for weirwood trees.

And then, um, gave them a lot of reference, and away they went.

It was a lovely project.

A massive tree. Great, big, gnarly roots.

And originally, we were gonna cast the tree from a Winterfell tree

because there's a godswood tree there,

which is very old.

So we did get some bits from that,

but not enough to really clad it.

So we've copied all the textures.

And it looks lovely with the grass growing in amongst the roots.

It brings it to life.

The tree, again, was one of those things

that was just one of my favorite builds to see

because it's that thing that you recognize.

Even though it's technically a different weirwood,

it's a weirwood tree,

which is very unique and recognizable to George's world.

And this particular one has a somewhat recognizable face.

We needed a face for the godswood tree,

and I just decided that, um, that it should be my mom.

She wasn't impressed either.

She was like, "What's that weird face?"

And I was like, "Well, it's you, actually."

It's almost like having a Christmas party,

and the disruptive brother's gonna turn up

and ruin the whole celebration.

He's that sort of, uh, unruly.

He's more Targaryen in that sense.

I think he's just winding his brother up again.

Just because he's the only person

that can wind the King up in that way.

You wear a crown.

Do you also call yourself "king"?

Once we smashed the Triarchy,

they named me "King of the Narrow Sea."

But I know that there is only one true king, Your Grace.

My crown and the Stepstones are yours.

Matt Smith is an incredible actor,

and he always finds the flip side of a scene or how to play with a scene.

Yeah, it's been interesting.

I think he's an instinctive actor, like myself.

And we just want to sort of explore

and go as deep as we possibly can, you know, into that relationship.

Uh, so it's been really fun sparring with him

and pushing each other.

It takes such a long time to paint bone.

We only had one,

so I think it was a very nervous day for the standbys.

Actually, Matt Smith is very respectful of these kinds of things.

He was so careful taking off the crown.

I think at one point, they asked him,

"Oh, could you just bow and put your head all the way down?"

And he was like, "No. No, I can't. It'll fall."

And I was at the side just going, "Oh, thank God."

The throne room is an incredible set.

Alejandro lights it beautifully.

You can really use the throne to sort of, kind of ground Viserys' power.

You know, we have 250 background

who were swarming into that room expecting to see the King.

And then Rhaenyra, she walks in on her own,

and she has these feelings for Daemon.

You're not quite sure what they are,

but they're there.

It was just kind of like, "Oh... Daemon's back."

And she sees him,

and then he kind of takes her on this big adventure.

And she feels that she's seen as an adult by him.

She's starting her angsty phase.

She's starting her, like, rebellious phase

and sneaking out at night.

She's kind of becoming-- slowly creeping into adulthood.

So, Rhaenyra has this sort of cool little concept

with the secret door when she sneaks out.

That was a nice element behind the paintings.

It sort of leads out somewhere.

And you never quite know where that-- where that is.

We did think it would have been a set for a longer passageway,

but it was decided it wasn't really needed,

that we didn't need to have the long stretch of passage for the shots.

We had room left on the stage to make that work,

and so we put it in.

That was a lovely moment in the script,

which I latched onto immediately.

This secret passage.

There are these panels behind the bed,

and a secret passage leading through the tunnels,

where she eventually emerges into King's Landing when she's...

Her secret night out.

And that was a lovely thing to do.

So that formed an integral part of Rhaenyra's apartment.

And there's also a hint of Cersei's apartment in the original,

which Miguel had wanted to keep,

the balcony and the window formation,

so we introduced that too.

Yeah, it's one of my favorite little secrets in our Red Keep set.

It felt important for Daemon and Rhaenyra to have this kind of shared secret,

and for him to come back from victory

and then take her out for a night on the town

that becomes something entirely different.

Where are we going?

Since the sets were not ready,

one of the first things we did was scout Spain.

So we scouted for this-- this marquee

and Flea Bottom streets where those scenes were gonna happen.

And it was kind of like the biggest part of episode four.

We found this town Cáceres,

which actually had been used as King's Landing

in season seven, I think, on Game of Thrones.

More and more, as the seasons wore on,

we actually, in the original show,

we were going to Dubrovnik, to Croatia a lot more.

And Spain was becoming more for these unique, individual locations,

but not so much for King's Landing.

Part of the devolution of Thrones

was trying to look at King's Landing and say,

"Two hundred years ago, what would this place look like?"

And I think, architecturally, the smaller villages in Spain,

there's a similar colonial feel.

There's something going on there that you can identify.

The two things cross over.

Cáceres is a very small, old town.

So the challenge is just getting everything in place

on the right time, and with the right amount of people,

without disturbing the unit that will be shooting around the corner.

It's very much a logistical problem,

rather than a creative problem, to be honest.

There's a lot of cogs and a lot of moving parts.

Normally, on a film or a television show,

you will have a main unit and a second unit.

This show does what is called--

it's tandem shooting, or double banking.

So, it's not a main and a second.

It is two main units shooting at the same time,

in different places.

In Cáceres, it's a city full of people, full of locals, tourism.

The locals like to be involved,

and they like, sometimes, even play as extras.

So, they are used to having us, and they love it.

So that was very beneficial for our side

because they are very collaborative with us.

The biggest challenge in Cáceres, for sure,

was the number of night shoots that we're shooting.

So we were doing a really big sequence

where Daemon and Rhaenyra are going through, essentially,

a festival that's happening at night.

In order to make that work, we had to pick certain streets

that would be cohesive with each other,

but we'd have to shoot that over consecutive nights.

We just had to get the permissions

from everyone that was living there

that this is gonna be noisy,

you're gonna be hearing it until six in the morning.

But fortunately, if you look out your window,

you're gonna see House of the Dragon shooting at the same time.

Suddenly, everyone was watching.

It was kinda like... . They know who we are.

We did have areas that the public didn't come into.

So we're kind of, like, quite sectioned off.

But I think when you get gritty sets like that,

it's often good fun,

because you can throw so many different fabrics and textures around,

and really old, dirty, rusty kind of pieces.

Quite a lot in Spain, actually, I found some really good sources

of furniture and smalls out there.

And... Yeah, it was great.

It was very difficult to get areas locked off for us.

And we were bringing in an awful lot of dressing.

And again, the set decorators have thought about

the furniture elements, and the exterior dressing, and the awnings.

All of that stuff takes a lot of work to get it down to that level.

The prop team are working real hard

to break all of that stuff down and make it look aged and worn,

and not very valuable.

Fuck off, boy.

He called me "boy."

Oh, it was great. I got to wear pants.

Yeah, there was a lot of, uh, discussion about the beanie

'cause all my hair had to, obviously, hide under the beanie.

And then my hair, you know, the silver hair.

So it's like, oh, if she takes the beanie off in this place

and has to walk through Flea Bottom without her hair.

are people are going to know it's her?

She's dressed as a boy,

and it's a very comfortable costume.

We went for, like, you know,

a very much no makeup and slightly trying to--

It's not possible with Milly because she's beautiful,

but make her look slightly ugly or plainer than she is.

Jany and Clare worked really closely together

to develop her character as a page boy.

And it's meant to be something that's given to her,

that's been pulled together.

So it's supposed to look like that.

And it's just about seeing her in a completely different light,

that she can make her way through the city unseen.

When we arrived in Cáceres, we talked to the town council

and asked them to switch off every single electric light

in the town where we were gonna shoot.

So we would start from the point of a black, dark canvas,

and then light it from then.

So it was like a really magical and beautiful place.

To have that control over the light

was incredibly unusual.

In this show, we have three sources of light overall,

which is very interesting just to think about it.

You have the moon, you have the sun, and you have fire.

And those three elements are the way of lighting the whole show,

no matter what, right?

So, we came up with this dragon breath effect,

which was a huge rig.

And it just had a pattern of breathing fire effect.

And I think it went really well.

I mean, I think at the end, that vision that you have...

And for months,

you talk about it, you think about it, you test,

and then you see it on the day and you see that it works.

It's really gratifying.

It was a great sequence to do.

We shot in pretty much every street in that town center.

I went back there on a day off, and I looked and it was like,

"Oh, yeah. We shot there, we shot there."

We really got the best out of that location.

It's a beautiful place.

It was a real party atmosphere there.

The way we shot it, we used a lot of Steadicams.

And that was ideal for those streets.

Those streets were--

You know, there were steps and cobbles.

And we were able to travel the whole length of those streets

with, um, Daemon,

and really get the best out of it.

And who might you be running from now?

Ser Harwin.

Princess?

It was incredible. It's basically a huge carnival.

A real, operating, real-time carnival.

Actual tightrope walkers and street merchants.

And what's wonderful is, you know,

all the background artists

and all the other supporting artists around,

everyone's in their own world.

So, you know-- And Miguel's made a point

of going up to everyone and giving them things to do.

So everyone feels immersed in the takes that we're doing,

and everyone's got their own little stories.

So, yeah, it's like being in another world.

It's always nice when you're in a, you know, a sort of different country.

It breaks up a shoot like this.

So we had fun. It was good.

And... camera. Action!

Now we come to the matter of the great Iron Chair.

We have this great kind of series of performers

who did the play that was written by Ryan

as a complete, stand-alone thing.

It's political satire.

They're mocking the royals, but it's a way of expressing

their own, you know, political beliefs,

and the way the people see the royals.

I wanted to do it in the vein of the sort of English pantomime,

you know, and dress the men up as women.

And we had a lot of fun with it.

Um, so we rehearsed that,

and we put together this sort of little story onstage,

which was really all about mocking Daemon and Rhaenyra.

So which heir might that chair bear?

Who will it be? The brother, the daughter,

or the little princeling of three?

And then we built the throne,

and I decided it would be fun if it was also a toilet.

So, you know, as soon as we made that throne into a toilet,

all the Spanish actors would sort of riff and improvise on it and sit on it.

- Rhaenyra!

The realm's delight!

That's got one of my favorite props.

It's got the Iron Throne as a toilet.

We just got told to make a wooden throne

that was almost made by craftsmen in this village.

So it had to look handmade, but it was almost like--

Not a piss-take of the Iron Throne,

but it was sort of a mock replica of the Iron Throne.

That was kind of like a circus marquee,

and that went through a couple of different stages,

so that we didn't lose the beauty of the architecture of the building itself.

And making sure that we had enough height,

and then enough space for the actors.

We've got this wonderful, huge, great, big, draped curtain

that's going over the top of this tiny stage, really.

And just getting the curtain up into position

on this old house where, originally,

we were told it's not safe.

And we've had to work out a very simple way of hanging this drape.

And it will be beautifully lit,

and will make the site of the marquee very evident.

I really enjoyed shooting the scene.

All the Spanish actors really just gave it their all.

They had-- They weren't shy.

You know, they just, they--

It was wonderful to see them work.

Shooting in Spain was amazing.

We were in Cáceres in, like, this beautiful old town.

They were night shoots, so they were quite difficult,

but, um... it was-- it was fun.

Clare Kilner is like...

Anything she wants. Anything. A liver? Take it.

She's been an absolute angel.

Gracias.