The House That Dragons Built (2022) s01e04 Episode Script

It was incredible.
It was really otherworldly.
We just shot the hell out of it.
So we were 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 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, to the two popular houses.
So they need this fast ship that can
kinda go back and forth between them.
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.
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 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 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
effects 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 Star Trek back and forth.
Take cover!
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.
And this kid comes up, so it kind of
just feels like a big joke at this point.
This feels like a big parade.
Volume is brand new to me.
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 'cause
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
You know, I felt that it was good
to bring the elements in a little bit.
So we built in some wind, had a lot
of leaves blowing across the stage.
'Cause 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."
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 they we didn't double them.
And the fight changed a few times.
A few times, there were different
ideas and what have you.
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 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,
like, 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 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.
You cannot live your life in fear,
or you will forsake the best parts of it.
I have no desire to live in fear.
Only solitude.
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 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 Westeros' 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.
No, there's grammatical things going
on here, so it got a bit complicated.
But we got through it and we did it.
Why did you come back?
There is surely more to your return
than simply taunting my father.
That set had to have
a very fairy-tale quality,
to have a sort
of 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 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 godwood tree there,
which is very old.
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 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 it should be my mom.
She wasn't impressed either.
She was like, "What's that weird face?"
I was like, "Well, it's you, actually."
It's almost like having a Christmas party
and the disruptive brother
is gonna turn up
and ruin the whole celebration.
He's that sort of 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.
The 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.
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's very respectful
of these kinds of things.
He was so careful taking off the crown.
At one point, they asked him like,
"Oh, could you just bow and, like,
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.
We had 250 background who were,
like, 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 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 yep, 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.
You never quite know 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.
For him to come back from victory
and then take her out
for a night on the town.
And that becomes
something entirely different.
Where are we going?
Since the sets were not ready,
the first one of the first things
we did was scout Spain.
So we scouted for 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,
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 sometimes even play as extras.
So they are used to having us,
and 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're 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
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 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 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, she takes the beanie
off in this place
and has to walk through Flea Bottom
without her hair.
And people are going to know it's her.
She's dressed as a boy
in a very comfortable costume.
We went for, like, 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.
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.
Well, when we arrived in Cáceres,
we talked to the town council.
And asked them to switch off every
single electric light in the town that
where we were gonna shoot.
So we would start from the point
of a black, dark canvass
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.
So, we came out 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 think I went back there on a day off.
And I looked, and it was like,
"Oh, yeah. 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, they were steps and cobbles.
We were able to travel the whole length
of those streets with Daemon.
And really get the best out of it.
And who might you be running
from now?
Ser Harwin.
Princess?
It is incredible.
It's basically a huge carnival.
Real operating, real-time carnival.
Actual tightrope walkers
and street merchants.
And what's wonderful is, you know,
all these background artists
and all the other supporting artists
around, everyone's in their own world.
And Miguel's made a point of going up to
the front and giving them things to do.
So everyone feels immersed
in the takes that we're doing,
and everyone's got
their own little story.
It's like being in another world.
It's always nice when you're in 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, dress the men up as women.
And we had a lot of fun with it.
So we rehearsed that.
And we put together
this sort of little story onstage.
Which was really all about
mocking Daemon and Rhaenyra.
To which heir might the chair bear?
Who will it be, the brother,
the daughter,
or the little princess,
of the three?
And then we built the throne,
and I decided that 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 gone over
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 we'll 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 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, like, old town.
There were night shoots, so they were
quite difficult, but it was fun.
Clare Kilner is like
Anything she wants.
Anything. A liver? Take it.
She's been an absolute angel.
And that's yes, all.