With the House of the Dragon premiere around the corner (August 21!), we can expect the marketing machine to kick into high gear—and an Entertainment Weekly cover shoot is usually the first step. EW always got the first official exclusives for Game of Thrones and it doesn’t look like that’s changing with this successor show, set during the Targaryen civil war more than a century before the original show.
Nick Romano’s cover shoot features interviews with Miguel Sapochnik, co-showrunner and director of 3 out of this season’s 10 episodes (and, of course, award-winning Game of Thrones director), who describes the new much more book-faithful Iron Throne. Co-showrunner Ryan Condal, who developed HOTD with the help of George R.R. Martin, gets into the reaction to the original show—the good and the bad— and how it may or may not affect this one:
“People are always going to have something to say about the way a beloved thing comes to an end. What they say doesn’t really affect the way we approach this. We have this huge legacy to carry forward. [And we want to] do that in the best way that honors what came before, but also doesn’t do the thing that I think a lot of sequels do: Here’s [what] you love wrapped up in a different packaging.”
There was a question whether House of the Dragon would use flashbacks to tell the decades-spanning story (which Game of Thrones almost always avoided, perhaps infamously) or it would move linearly through the years, but this feature puts the debate to rest: “House of the Dragon will play out linearly over those decades.”
Emma D’Arcy, who plays the adult Rhaeneyra Targaryen, reveals their experience auditioning for the show (at first they thought it was a Game of Thrones rip-off, instead of a spin-off!) and is praised by the showruners for their performance as Rhaenyra, who’s described as the centerpiece of the show in many ways; Matt Smith teases the dubious loyalties of his character Daemon; Paddy Considine talks about bringing a tragic sense to the core of his character, King Viserys; and Olivia Cooke (Alicent Hightower) considers finding the nuance in the archetype of “the woman whispering into a powerful man’s ear”. Eve Best and Steve Toussaint also discuss their characters, Rhaenys and Corlys—the latter of which, curiously, auditioned for the role of the Sea Snake with lines of dialogue that originally belonged to Charles Dance’s Tywin Lannister in Game of Thrones.
There is, of course, much more to these interviews, as well as a video segment, and you should go read and watch them in detail at Entertainment Weekly. Finally, there is also a portrait gallery and several new photographs, including the two shown above, all of them taken by Ollie Upton for HBO:
That’s all for today, but the barrage of news just started—more coming soon!
Who’s the knight standing behind king Jaehaerys? Anyone important? Kind looks like Pierce Brosnan.
Showrunner Ryan Condal has a right approach and he showed a lot of respect for the original show and what GoT creators Benioff and Weiss did.
The costumes look amazing and I like the idea that it is more intimate and more about families and politics. I also like that Martin was involved and consulted and respected so I am optimistic this will be really good. I also like that they are using different actors for the older roles. One of the things I couldn’t buy at the end of GOT was the kids – Sansa, Arya and Bran , they just didn’t have the gravitas to pull off where their characters ended up. That’s not their fault of course as the end hasn’t been written but a time jump would have worked better and different actors in the roles might have made the ending more palatable for me. It’s something the Crown series does really well. The actors they’ve lined up for HOD, some of who I am familiar with, seem to be very talented so I’m looking forward to see how they embody their characters.
That is one nifty dragon helmet!
I’ll try and think of HoD as its own thing and not GoT 2.0.
I liked that article, it has piqued my interest more than any other info. My only concern is the costumes, I just don’t like them. GOT had a few bad costumes but they were generally solid, and they had plenty of spectacular costumes that sent me wild. These… do not look good. That pregnant lady is wearing one of the ugliest costumes I have seen in a long time, that dragon armour is awful. It’s not the end of the world but I really like costume design, I notice things like that
Kathy,
How’s this for a grown up Sansa?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FW1JjaTXEAErt8w?format=jpg&name=large
That’s
Here’s been my choice for grown-up Arya
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTAyMjYyODA0MDVeQTJeQWpwZ15BbWU3MDg2MDE3ODI@._V1_UY1200_CR84,0,630,1200_AL_.jpg
and…
https://tv-fanatic-res.cloudinary.com/iu/s–iBjd1DS4–/t_full/cs_srgb,f_auto,fl_strip_profile.lossy,q_auto:420/v1371134925/cote-de-pablo-pic.png
These are photos of
Steve Toussaint auditioned with Charles Dances’s lines? and they signed him? hell, i can’t wait to hear this guy. i really hope he sounds as intimidating as Tywin.
Jenny,
do you remember how we dressed in the eighties? different ages, different styles.
Kathy,
…. and grown-up Bran:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/John_Oliver_2014.jpg
Ten Bears,
Back in the day before it became evident that Arianne the book character had been cut from show GoT, Cote de Pabla was a fairly popular choice for Arianne.
death by chickenfire,
I’ve been pretty down on costumes in general lately. Standard period drama’s look cheap and inaccurate. Fantasy costumes don’t look convincing. idk if it’s an issue with HD or what. I do like the full on black and red Targ costumes though. They look really good
Hyped for this! I really didn’t expect we’ll see Jaehaerys I in this TV show and I hope the TV show manages to properly incorporate those flashbacks while still retaining the focus on the “main story” though. But I do feel it’s better to “show and not tell” the very source of agnatic primogeniture in Westeros so I guess these flashbacks to Jaehaerys could do the job.
I just hope Condal won’t put too many characters in House of the Dragon. I know he wants to present himself as GRRM’s fanboy that will respect “the canon”, but I hope he will think about the interests of the show first, like Benioff and Weiss did with the original show.
I don’t know about anyone else but I’m still feeling only luke warm to this and actually more excited about some of the other spin offs. I’ll give it a watch but hopefully I can perk up a bit more in the coming weeks.
Note. I see Bryan Cogman has endorsed the show and that it’s telling the story just as GRRM would like (unsure if there is a dig at D&D there but I suspect not) on twitter.
You know the costumes also look a bit off to me, not sure I like them either and honestly no idea why considering they are probably more authentic for the time.