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If there was one factor you may at all times rely on Game of Thrones for, it was graphic, horrific violence. (And intercourse.) There have been canine maulings and cranium squishes, large zombies and unwilling testicle removing. Issues obtained wild on that present, and generally, it felt prefer it got here out of nowhere.
That’s actually what occurs within the premiere episode of Home of the Dragon, HBO’s new Thrones prequel. [Warning: Spoilers ahead.] After King Viserys Targaryen (Paddy Considine) convenes a kingdom-wide jousting event to have a good time the approaching start of the kid he is aware of can be a son, we see his brother Daemon (Matt Smith) go head-to-head—or hand-to-hand, because it have been—with the mysterious and good-looking Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel).
Across the similar time, Viserys is summoned to his queen’s chamber, the place he finds out that the infant is breech, making supply an impossibility. He’s given a alternative: Both the physician can lower the infant out of his beloved spouse—with out anesthesia or her consent! Whee!—or they’ll roll the cube and threat the deaths of each his spouse and the infant. Viserys takes the previous, and the ensuing scene is brutal and grotesque, exemplifying the cruelty of the Thrones world, the place generally, it’s actually all nearly preserving the road it doesn’t matter what. The newborn is born, on the expense of the all-too-short lifetime of Aemma Targaryen (Sian Brooks), and, sadly, dies shortly thereafter.
WIRED talked to the solid of Home of the Dragon concerning the episode’s brutal first bang—and what it means for his or her characters’ futures in King’s Touchdown.
Capturing the Joust Was a Huge, Humorous Manufacturing
The premiere’s large joust scene required not solely a quintain space, but in addition large stands and a platform on which members of the king’s court docket may watch. Twenty or so core gamers have been on that dais and no less than 100 extras have been on the set at any given time. “It was our first group scene,” says Emily Carey, who performs younger Alicent Hightower. It was simply taking pictures on the studio backlot, however Carey says doing that scene was the primary second the place she was actually reminded that, “Hey, that is Sport of Thrones. Individuals are going at one another with lances.”
Carey says that whereas the motion within the scene may get intense, the precise taking pictures was light-hearted, if solely as a result of Considine and Rhys Ifans, who performs Otto Hightower, have been like “uncles at a marriage, the place one among them cracks a joke after which the opposite has to make a funnier joke, after which they maintain one-upping themselves.”
Don’t Fear: That Wasn’t Matt Smith Doing His Personal Stunts
Whereas Matt Smith says he was on set for a lot of the jousting shoot, he wasn’t really taking his personal falls. As a substitute, it was his stunt double, Eduardo Gago Muñoz. “It’s not my pure habitat to be on a horse,” Smith says, including that he and Frankel would pop into the scenes after the doubles took their falls.
That doesn’t imply the duo didn’t study to experience, although: Frankel says the Dragon gang took classes at The Devil’s Horsemen, “a extremely outdated British establishment that’s been educating actors to experience for years.” Since Frankel had by no means ridden earlier than, he began sluggish, on a really primary horse, and labored his approach up the proverbial ranks. By the tip, he says, “you’re hopefully in a position to canter and maintain some type of sword in your hand.”
Daemon’s Huge Dragon Helmet Is Fairly—Heavy
Whereas many of the joust rivals have pretty primary or conventional armor, Daemon enters the competitors carrying a helmet lined with ornate designs and protruding dragon wings. Smith says the piece of costuming was “fairly heavy,” weighing an estimated 5 kilograms (about 11 kilos). “The entire armor is kind of heavy,” he says, “nevertheless it appears fabulous.” He credit HOTD costume designer Jany Temime with making the helmet “really feel type of dragon-like, but in addition elegant and classy on the similar time.”
Every part Is Painful for Rhaenys Targaryen, the Queen Who By no means Was
At first of the premiere, we see the king’s eldest grandchild, Rhaenys Targaryen, being handed over in favor of her youthful male cousin, Viserys. It’s a wound that festers even now, with members of the dominion nonetheless believing she would have been a greater ruler. That’s clear when one of many knights asks for her favor on the joust, calling her “the Queen Who By no means Was.” Eve Greatest, who performs Rhaenys, says that transfer was “tremendous harmful in all elements,” suggesting that her character would reasonably not remind the world of her declare to the throne.
“I don’t need him to say it in any respect, and never solely as a result of I do not need it to be continuously thrown in my face,” she says. “It was the most important supply of disgrace in Rhaenys’ life, and the truth that it’s continuously being referred to is actually, actually annoying.”
What Rhaenys and husband Lord Corlys Valaryon (Steve Toussaint) do have is particular perception into the workings at court docket and the historical past of the dominion. When Rhaenys remarks on the event that every one the fighters have, as Greatest places it, “their arms filled with metal and none of them have ever identified actual conflict,” it’s a reminder that King’s Touchdown has been beneath Targaryen rule for hundreds of years, leaving the empire reasonably lax and tender.