The House That Dragons Built (2022) s01e09 Episode Script

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 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 event.
It starts with a bang,
with this information getting out,
and the council being called,
and the doors being locked.
The Small Council is always lit,
it's always active.
But this was totally mystery.
Like, they were plotting the coup.
It may not come to that.
A few decisions that we made: how
to shoot it with cameras to be flowing,
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?
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!
There is a murder in between.
It's pretty brutal,
but it's pretty quick,
and then the whole conversation
keeps going.
The king doesn't wish
for the murder of his daughter!
He loved her.
I will not have you deny this.
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, and we will proceed
now as I see fit!
Cut. Thank you. Great.
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
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.
Sometime 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."
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 funniest 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.
They look like monkeys or something,
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, like, 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.
You see now what he is.
You've not seen everything.
-Aegon's?
- One of many, I'd wager.
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 in 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,
I don't know, 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.
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 in sword
fighting, 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 things,
anyway.
All the physical stuff like that,
I think, is all good.
We have a bit of a scrap on the floor,
Aemond and I, and 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.
There's a bit where he grabs me,
and I said to him,
"I'm gonna bite your hand there."
And he goes, "Yeah. No, lovely, lovely.
We'll have more of that. Yeah, yeah."
I was on board, yeah.
Ah, great. Brilliant.
We've seen the dragon pit
in Game of Thrones.
But this is 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.
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.
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,
they're going to 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 them 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.
And it was the full 360 thing in 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.
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 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 dragonrider.
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.
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 the circle
to 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
from that, we might make soft versions,
depending on what
the stunt requirements are.
Peter had used Damascus steel
to make the flat filed sword.
So, step by step, we engineer 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 has 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.
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 Jamie 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.
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 liked 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.
We knew that we needed
a penultimate scene.
There had been this kind of, "Oh, well,
it'll 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
writers' 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 turns 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.
You have Rhaenys on the buck.
It's such a brilliant showdown between
her and Alicent that's not verbal at all.
It's purely in the eyes.
When prevising drawing
and storyboarding and shooting,
you have to consider dragons,
although they're not even there.
Anytime 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
her 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 ten to twelve
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.
It was just a nice little really subtle
visual clue that you just need
to be a little bit careful who you're
gonna mess with.
We want 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's a great, heroic moment
for her character.
When she wasn't picked
inherently 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.
Episode nine was my absolute favorite.
It has an evolution, you know?
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.