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♪ (INTENSE MUSIC PLAYS) ♪

Episode nine changed the whole history of Westeros.

I don't know if my imagination can do that.

It's unbelievably uncomfortable.

It's not very pretty.

And the whole time I was thinking like, "Oh, I just shouldn't have done that."

And then, this incredible explosion, an event.

Nine was a script that we very much enjoyed writing

because it's a thriller, it's a race against time.

Finally, the King is dead. And now what?

Viserys' death sets off this whole domino effect.

Nine was a completely different ball game.

I mean, basically, it's a coup.

And then, this incredible explosion, an event.

It starts with a bang,

with this information getting out,

and the council being called, and the doors being locked.

ALEJANDRO MARTÍNEZ: The small council is always lit, it's always active.

But this was totally a mystery

that they were plotting the coup.

It may not come to that.

MARTÍNEZ: A few decisions that we made:

how to shoot it, what cameras to be following,

to be about the characters, what everybody's thinking.

So I wanted it to be about them, about what they were saying.

The King was well last night, by all accounts.

Which of you here can swear that he died of his own accord?

MARTÍNEZ: It's a really dark environment,

with just focus of light at the table.

My inspiration was a little bit of The Godfather.

- I will have no part-- - Sit down!

MARTÍNEZ: There is a murder in between.

It's pretty brutal, but it's pretty quick,

and then the whole conversation keeps going.

But the King did not wish for the murder of his daughter!

- He loved her. I will not have you deny this. - He did.

One more word, and I'll have you removed from this chamber and sent to the Wall!

Episode nine is primarily Alicent's story.

It's a good departure for her because she's seeing her father for who he has become.

Clare Kilner watched that first scene in episode one

when her father, Otto Hightower,

sends her in to visit Viserys in his grief.

And then, in episode nine, she comes to her father

and basically tells him to fuck off.

Our hearts were never one.

Rather, I've been a piece that you moved about the board.

And we sort of drew a parallel between those two scenes

to show the arc of what had happened between the two of them,

from when she was a child to now,

when she's a woman coming and saying, "I'm done with you."

Olivia is heaven to work with.

She's a weather system, you know?

She has such a vast emotional range

and can access any number of paradoxical emotions in one line.

She has an incredible ease and a deep relaxation

that she can just switch it on and move into the character.

And blow your socks off, to be honest.

Reluctance to murder is not a weakness!

I have Aegon.

We will proceed now as I see fit!

Cut. Thank you. Great. Everybody, thanks.

Flea Bottom had been established in Game of Thrones in Spain, in Cáceres.

You walk into it, and it just immediately is King's Landing.

You can see why they've shot there before.

And also, it's this thing about historic towns

which are beautifully renovated and kept up.

It's very hard to make them feel down and dirty and seedy

in the way that we want to do with Flea Bottom.

You're into the red-light district of King's Landing.

It's the poor neighborhood. It's rough and ready.

You don't go down there at night

unless you know what you're doing and you can handle yourself.

All the windows were getting covered up

with tatty, old, wooden blinds or pieces of fabric.

We were spreading dirty and smelly things around on the floor.

It's not very pretty.

Aemond has an idea to go and visit a brothel

that he knows that Aegon frequents.

They have an interesting conversation with the madam there,

who actually, oddly, was my teacher at drama school.

I was so nervous. I was acting in front of her on screen.

Some time last night.

Ah, I was really liking that one.

One more.

Mark up.

And the whole time, I was thinking, like,

"Oh, I just shouldn't have done that."

I think we got a little glimpse of

the kind of Flea Bottom that we wanted to portray.

Which is a far more lawless place than it used to be.

There's a place called the "fighting pit",

which is a real sort of seedy, underground club

where kids fight and terrible things happen.

And all this really sort of grim kind of world

that exists beneath the sort of veneer of royal life.

The fighting pit was really interesting.

Some of these gruesome scenes are the funnest to do, weirdly.

We had to get special teeth that were filed down

'cause the idea is that they bite and scratch each other.

We had these nails. We had to dirty the kids up.

I wanted to shoot it almost like

what I imagine a dogfighting pit or a cockfighting pit would be.

Except it's done with children.

It's just really sad 'cause they're really feral as well.

And even the way in which they're fighting with each other is very feral.

You know, they look like-- sort of like monkeys or something.

you know, going at each other. It was nuts!

We auditioned children

from local Judo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu clubs.

And then we just worked with them,

and we choreographed their own individual fight beats.

It was more about having them looking feral, screaming, growling, snarling,

than it was about the fighting.

It was a very animalistic atmosphere and energy in there.

Which was nice 'cause it was showing the unhuman element

towards Aegon and where he was hanging about.

And I think that scene played a big role on the episode.

Because we need to know what kind of a king we're about to get.

Do you see now, what he is? You've not seen everything.

Aegon's?

One of many, I'd wager.

INTO THE HEAVENS

The Grand Sept was another environment that we used the Volume for.

The key with the Volume seems to be

that you have elements of built scenery,

which separate us and the actors and the action

from the actual screens of the Volume.

In terms of set dressing,

there isn't much that we can put in there, really.

Because you can't hang things from the ceiling or the walls.

You are restricted within a certain space.

Basically, we put all the foreground in,

and then the screen behind takes over.

I mean, it's pretty impressive, innit, when you look at it.

It's the religious center for the Faith of the Seven.

And I wanted the idea that

you look down the point of each star,

and there was the statue of each face.

It was beautiful because it has such strong light shafts in it.

The influence was Daniel Libeskind's design for the Jewish memorial in Berlin.

That was particularly impressive,

with his use of light, with these high, slat-y windows,

which just shafted light through into the center

and took you out of the space and into the heavens.

I do regret this, friend.

This is a new Grand Sept.

This is not the one that we see get blown up

in season six of Game of Thrones.

This is 200 years before it.

At this point, the Sept of Baelor doesn't exist.

So we've built it as a CG asset.

We see it in our King's Landing environment that we've created.

Fortunately, we found a great courtyard.

But we were replacing so much stuff,

we ended up building quite an extensive green wall there.

When we arrived in Spain, and I saw

those steps and that plaza,

it made me think of Romeo and Juliet.

And I just got obsessed with those steps,

and how could we choreograph something on them.

So we planned a sword fight.

Action.

You won't win.

The boys loved that scene,

and they threw themselves into it.

They wanted to jump over the bannisters and the railings.

They were just really good at doing

their own fighting and some of their stunts.

They really worked hard with Rowley

to get those sword fights right.

That's when it's just fun.

A fight is normally five or six punches or kicks.

And a sword fight is normally five or six strikes.

So we have to try and find a way

of making those moves look interesting and exciting.

Because there's not an infinite variation of what we can do.

It was like a crash course, basically,

in sword fighting 'cause we'd never done it before.

We've obviously done martial arts in the past.

It was just kind of getting our style and flavor into the sword fight.

But to be fair, I think we took to it quite well, innit?

I enjoy doing that side of thing anyway.

All the physical stuff like that, I think, is all good.

TOM GLYNN-CARNEY: We have a bit of a scrap on the floor,

Aemond and I, and, uh, it gets pretty heated.

Let go of me!

We really wanted to make it into, like, a sibling hatred.

And we thought, "What if Aegon spits in Aemond's face?"

Me and Tom are like-minded people.

We knew that we were gonna go and give everything that we had to that scene.

GLYNN-CARNEY: There's a bit where he grabs me, and I said to him,

"I'm gonna bite your hand there."

And he goes, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, lovely, lovely. We'll have more of that. Yeah, yeah."

I was on board, yeah.

Ah, great. Brilliant.

APPLAUSE, CLAMORING)

We've seen the dragon pit in Game of Thrones.

But this is, of course, 200 years before,

so there is a full version of the dragon pit.

One of the sets you could never build.

You'd use your whole budget to build that.

It's 250 foot long, 120 foot wide.

That is still only a fraction of the floor space.

What we ended up doing was building component pieces of the dragon pit.

One of the key elements being the embossed, carved, bronze doors.

And action!

Those were one of our favorite jobs here.

We wanted to have lots of busyness in them

'cause when you make something big, they can be very bland.

So we wanted to keep the drawing in them quite simple,

so you could see from a distance what they were.

But when close up, they wanted a lot of detail.

There's lovely bits of sea.

There's some of the walls, some of the castles are great.

And even, you know, there's a sunburst in one of them.

We're just having a bit of fun.

And, of course, the doors were only

a third of the size of what they would truly be.

So we know that the effects are gonna have to add

the last two-thirds of the doors. So that is all blue screen.

ALEJANDRO MARTÍNEZ: The effects was a big, big part of it.

Many conversations we had about what we could do,

couldn't do, how to do what we wanted to do.

Logistically, we were working in different parts of the dragon pit.

And we couldn't put them exactly where they were in relation to each other.

So we had a number of problems.

For example, when we'd shoot one end of the dragon pit,

we could never look towards the doors.

So, we had to have a blue screen in front of the doors

because we had to add perspective to it.

Plus, having that separation from reality of working in a blue environment,

and having to keep people aware of what they're looking at,

and have an understanding of what's going on.

The scenes were concepted so that when you're on the stage in this space,

everybody can see what you're actually looking at.

And we can lock the two worlds together,

so that then, anyone who wants to interact with it

can see a view through camera with the creatures, with the set extensions...

They can walk the set and see it all in stereo on the glasses.

Basically, anything that's not there now, that's important to the composition of the frame,

then that's what we provide solutions for.

GLYNN-CARNEY: And it was the full 360 thing,

the way that they wanted all the shots in.

All the shots were included.

That was one of those moments where I was like, "Oh! We're doing it."

With COVID, we couldn't have that many people in there,

so it's a lot of adding CG people,

but also a full CG environment around them.

GLYNN-CARNEY: And there was a big line, over 100 supporting artists,

who were playing soldiers, with swords in the air,

creating this, sort of, archway for me to walk under.

But I kept being reminded by people that these extras

are gonna be multiplied, and multiplied, and multiplied, and multiplied.

And they're gonna go for miles. And they're gonna be up in the balconies.

There's just gonna be hundreds of thousands of people.

And I'm thinking, "Oh, my God! I don't know if my imagination can do that."

Cut!

- Cut there. - Okay. Let's, um, let's do the fallback now.

The crown of the conqueror passed down through generations.

Aegon's crown is a 3D-printed item.

3D printing is quite interesting 'cause it's resin that's then copper-plated,

and then nickel-plated, and then iron-plated to get this look.

It's quite an in-depth experience to get to this point.

And leather on the inside to make it a little bit more comfortable.

And it definitely... doesn't fit me.

I wish it did.

Aegon Targaryen is the true heir to the Iron Throne.

This is the coronation scroll holder,

which the septon will open when they crown Aegon.

The item goes back and forth between us and Graphics for its sizes, looks...

I quite like how things bounce around all the time

and how many people end up being involved to get this thing done.

I'm very interested in the design and construction of movie props,

and swords in particular.

And there are three Valyrian steel blades in this particular story.

The first of those is Dark Sister.

And that ends up in Daemon's hand when he's given it for his prowess on the tournament field

as a knight and a dragon rider.

The second sword is Blackfyre, that all the Targaryen kings carried and wielded.

You know, Jaehaerys and Viserys and, of course, Aegon himself.

So, I hunted down Peter Johnsson,

knowing that he was a real sword designer, and said, "Hey!

Can you create something that is a real weapon

that looks like it's from this fantasy world that we're creating?"

When you make a sword,

the first priority is to make it purposeful and well-balanced.

But a sword is also an object of power,

and it has to express this power in its design.

And to show that these Targaryens took on the faith of the seven gods,

everything is built from this circle with the seven-pointed star.

So, everything is held together by this geometry.

A mystical way to bind the power of those seven gods

and the symbol of the dragon into these objects.

When we make a weapon,

we always make it for real for the filming.

And then we will produce rubber versions from that.

And we might make hard versions,

we might make soft versions,

depending on what the stunt requirements are.

Peter had used Damascus steel to make the Blackfyre sword.

So, step by step, we engineered the blade

and then transfer that into vector files.

Then, to print that out, lay the vinyls on,

peel the sections off, you then lay it

into the acid to let it eat away

at the open metal.

So much effort's gone into the blade at this point

and it can just go wrong by putting it all in acid.

Luckily, we got some really fantastic blades.

♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYS) ♪

Out of the way!

The old one that people should recognize

is the famous Catspaw Dagger that we first met in season one

of the original Game of Thrones, the dagger

that is put into catspaw hand to go murder Bran Stark

after his fall off the roof and after witnessing

Jaime Lannister and Cersei Lannister together.

We actually got the original catspaw dagger flown over.

We looked at it, measured it, and we decided

to reduce it slightly, but it's got

the same silhouette.

But it has a different feel in the way

it's been manufactured.

And the thought was, you know, between now and then

it may have been re-hilted, but at the end of the day

it's got the dragon bone hilt and the same

Valyrian steel blade.

And we just really like this idea

that the dagger that ends up passing through hand

after hand after hand, was a nice way

to tie the two series together.

It doesn't matter.

What do you mean, "It doesn't matter"?

I don't want it.

♪ (TENSE MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪

We knew we needed a penultimate scene.

There had been this kind of, "Oh, will it be the coronation?"

et cetera, and I just kept thinking to myself,

"We gotta do better than this."

I just remember we were in the writer's room one day

and I was like, "It would be awesome

if Rhaenys just came through the floor on a dragon!"

The visual of it was so powerful and so much fun.

It went in immediately and we never looked back.

Once Meleys shows up and all hell breaks loose

then it's a lot of destruction, a lot of dust and splinters

and pure chaos.

It's huge, that sequence.

Because there's lots of physical simulations to do.

First of all, you're building an environment.

You've got CG crowd work, simulated dust clouds,

et cetera in there.

So it's a lot of work, a lot of integration.

Oh, there she is. There's the door, and...

You have Rhaenys on the buck and it's such

a brilliant showdown between her and Alicent

that's not verbal at all, it's purely in the eyes.

MARTÍNEZ: When previzing, drawing, and storyboarding and shooting,

you have to consider dragons, although they're not even there.

Any time there's a dragon in the scene all hilarity

ensues among the cast because, of course,

there's never a dragon.

Trying to act opposite a man holding a stick

with a ball on it with a dragon...

And me shouting, "Okay, Olivia, the dragon's gonna get you,

it's gonna take a breath." And then we'd have SFX

blow the dragon breath on Olivia's hair,

and Olivia's hair would just like shoot back.

It takes every ounce of creative imagination

going on inside your head for that to work.

Rhaenys is a Targaryen, so I use the color red and black

for the armor.

It was a really nice one to make in that it's quite understated,

it's deliberately very elegant.

It obviously shows wealth and power,

but it's not too in-your-face in that regard.

But it was probably 10-12 weeks in terms

of modeling to get the form right.

It's all perfectly tailored to her shape

which involved a lot of repeat fittings.

Which, I'm told, looks amazing, it's unbelievably uncomfortable.

One of the nice details that we managed to incorporate

was the talon scales on the front of the chest.

Was just a nice little, really subtle visual clue

that, you know, you just need to be a little bit careful

who you're gonna mess with.

We wanted a triumphal moment for her

at the end of the season and we see her

being the one that's going to take the news to Dragonstone

of the coup and of Rhaenyra's throne being stolen.

It was a great heroic moment for her character.

When she wasn't picked in Harrenhal

right at the beginning, I think inside,

her spirit wanted to get on a dragon

and burst through the ceiling and say, "Fuck you all!"

For me, it's all about how can we get

to the core of a character and express that visually,

so it can go out to an audience and they can feel

a little bit of what those characters are feeling

and go through their journey with them.

MARTÍNEZ: Episode nine was my absolute favorite.

It has an evolution, it starts

with a very specific event and it ends

with another one that changed the whole history of Westeros.

It's got all the hallmarks of an iconic Thrones sequence.

It was just big.