‘House of the Dragon’ Star Steve Toussaint Says Critics Who Question His Casting Are Only Bothered Because

First read
“Inside
Business firm of the Dragon
Part 1: The Battle to Supercede
Game of Thrones.” Below, the story concludes …

Later HBO spent years searching to detect the ideal successor series to the king of its platform, network executives picked a story that was about … what else? A struggle for succession.

On the
House of the Dragon’s
set at Leavesden Studios exterior London, showrunners Miguel Sapochnik and Ryan Condal sit merely steps below the iconic Iron Throne. Visitors to this 24,000-foursquare-foot room tend to accept the aforementioned awed reaction: It’south is such a vast ornamental space that it feels like you’re in a sacred temple, and your instinct is to drop your vox to a whisper. Looking closer, some details take changed from the original series: The throne room’s towering pillars have become statues of foreboding Targaryen kings, dragon eggs nest in coal-fueled “incubators” and the iconic Iron Throne itself has added rows of perilous twisted swords.

Sapochnik breaks down the prequel’southward story in the simplest of terms: “The main characters are two women and two men. There’s the king (Viserys), his blood brother (Daemon), the king’south daughter (Rhaenyra) and her best friend (Alicent). Then the best friend becomes the rex’southward wife and thereby the queen. That in itself is complicated — when your best friend goes and marries your dad. But from the tiniest things, it slowly evolves this gigantic battle between two sides.”

If that setup sounds more intimate than
Thrones, it is. For all its activeness set pieces (there is a spectacular joust tourney in the airplane pilot), one of the clearest differences between the two shows is that
House of the Dragon
feels like a family drama (with a dash of incest, of course).

Explains HBO and HBO Max content chief Casey Bloys: “I liked the idea of focusing on one family, and obviously the Targaryens have a lot of drama to become around. I also liked the echo of how empires tin can quickly autumn — those are the types of conversations we are having in our own country, which I don’t think is anything I would’ve idea we’d be talking most 20 years ago.”

Condal solved the pesky when-to-offset-the-story problem of show’s source textile with a rather bold move that’s roughly in line with writer George R.R. Martin’s vision. The season opens with its female leads as teens (played by Emily Carey and Milly Alcock). Midway through the flavor, the story jumps ten years and the roles are taken over by Olivia Cooke (Ready Player One) and Emma D’Arcy (Truth Seekers). The show’due south two male person leads are older and played by the same actors throughout. There are boosted multiyear time jumps within the 10-episode season likewise — a structure more than similar the fashion
The Crown
unfolds over the course of its unabridged run than similar
Thrones.

“This is how you tell this story correctly,” Condal says. “Nosotros’re telling a story of a generational war. We set everything upward and so by the time that get-go sword stroke falls, you lot empathize all the players.”

Bloys admits being apprehensive nigh the high-concept structure, but non because it risks making the kickoff flavour more than of a boring burn down than battle-hardened
Thrones
fans might await. “It made me nervous because information technology’due south hard enough to cast any role, merely if yous’re casting two characters of different ages, you have to be right four times,” he says. “Now that I’ve seen the outcome, I feel really good about it.”

The toughest role to make full was grown-upwardly Princess Rhaenyra, the king’south dragon-riding girl who eventually goes to state of war to fight for her claim to the Atomic number 26 Throne.

D’Arcy (who uses “they/them” pronouns) was less known than some of the other actors in contention and looks entirely unlike the ethereal, platinum-blond Targaryens in real life. But Condal and Sapochnik were won over by their auditions and the actor was able to place with the fantastical character on a very man level.

“Rhaenyra has an ongoing boxing with what it means to be a woman and is a fundamental outsider,” D’Arcy says. “She’south terrified of getting locked into maternity and is aware of how her position would exist different if she were male. I’chiliad a nonbinary person. I’ve ever found myself both pulled and repelled past masculine and feminine identity and I think that plays out truthfully here. She can’t nourish courtroom in a way that comes hands to other people.”

By contrast, Cooke’s Alicent excels at courtly tradition, fifty-fifty though she feels trapped past its constraints. Readers of Martin’s books ofttimes compare her character to Cersei Lannister, though Alicent is a scrap more sympathetic.

“I fucking love that comparison because Cersei was my favorite grapheme,” Cooke says. “Alicent’due south got a very dark side to her, but she’southward too merely striving for what she thinks is good, fifty-fifty though it’southward simply misplaced.”

Alicent serves King Viserys, played by Paddy Considine (Peaky Blinders), who gives a performance Martin is particularly thrilled past, with the writer comparing Considine’s take on the role to Male monarch Lear. “He’s a expert human, just a bad king in that he’southward trying to please everybody,” Considine says.

And and so at that place’south Matt Smith, whose casting was initially met with resistance among some fans who had a tough fourth dimension envisioning the
Doctor Who
star equally the king’southward disorderly brother, Daemon. The producers felt Smith had a “weird androgynous quality” that made him perfect, and the player vanishes into the part onscreen.

“On the page, Daemon could really exist ane thing,” Smith says. “I was ever interested in trying to subvert it a little into something else. I think there’s a sort of strange, sensitive nature to Daemon and quite a genuine loyalty to him and humanistic qualities that you tin can skin away and come across.”

Yet the chore proved rather treacherous: Smith suffered a serious injury to a disc in his cervix while performing a stunt in Portugal for
Dragon
and plowed forward with filming despite existence in frequent pain on ready. “It’south a fucking pain in the neck — literally, physically and metaphorically,” says Smith, who gave our interview by phone while on the way to physical therapy months after the flavour had wrapped.

Much of the prove’s action plays out in The Cerise Go along — the seat of power in King’s Landing from which the Targaryens rule. Sapochnik gives a bout, pointing out familiar sites from
Thrones, such as the staircase where the Hound and the Mount fought their fateful last boxing and the courtyard where Cersei in one case threatened Littlefinger. These once-split sets take been re-created as a united playscape of interconnected rooms and staircases, where directors can stage action that seamlessly flows from one room to another.

“You could accept moved in and literally lived in The Red Keep,” Considine says. “I’ve never been on a set up where you simply go on walking around and finding rooms and staircases.”

There was plenty of on-location filming as well — ten weeks hopping around Spain, Portugal and Northern England. Just the production also had a handy tool for transporting actors to otherworldly locations that the original serial didn’t have — an LED video wall for adding real-time backgrounds to scenes (similar the one Disney+ employs on its
Star Wars
shows).

The video wall made one of the
Thrones‘ most grueling acting tasks far more enjoyable: riding the mechanical dragon rig. What used to be sitting on a mechanical balderdash-like device in front end of a greenscreen for heed-numbing hours at present allows actors to see what their characters are seeing equally they “fly” through the skies.

“From everything I’ve heard, information technology’s radically different from what people on
Thrones
had to put upward with,” D’Arcy says. “I loved information technology. Information technology’s like going to an Ikea and trying all the kitchen taps.”

As for the dragons themselves, the testify has at to the lowest degree 17, and considerable endeavor was made to give each a unique wait and personality. Some are even disguised, like tropical lizards.

“The biggest difference near this series is the fact that dragons exist in this [era], whereas they were an extinct species that came back to life in the original show,” Condal says. “So in that location’due south an infrastructure built around them. There’southward a dragon pit, saddles and dragon keepers — this monk-like guild that takes care of them.”

All the same for all the dragons gliding virtually, the show’south biggest thematic focus is the furthest thing from fantasy — and it tackles some major sensitivities around
Game of Thrones.

The New Battlefield

Arya, Brienne, Cersei, Daenerys, Sansa —
Game of Thrones
had some of the best female characters in pop culture; each strong, unique and unlike one another or anybody else on TV. Yet the show was as well criticized for its treatment of such characters besides as its portrayal of the sexual violence inherent in Martin’s globe (which is a fantasy realm simply i that’s directly inspired by medieval Europe and its associated horrors). The
Dragon
team is very much enlightened of such criticisms and aimed to tackle its material a bit differently.

“Shows are a product of their fourth dimension, and there’due south a lot more awareness now about what we’re portraying and why — and who’s having the conversations about it,” Bloys says.

When shaping the first flavor, the showrunners realized a theme was coming into focus — 1 they hadn’t expected: The patriarchy would rather destroy itself than see a adult female on the throne.

“Information technology wasn’t something where we said, ‘We must make the testify well-nigh this,’” Sapochnik says. “But rather it’s something where we realized that’s what we had in front of u.s..”

As Cooke puts information technology: “There are times where Emma is on one stage and I’chiliad on the other and nosotros’re both surrounded by [male characters] being idiotic. And we know if all these men just fucked off, and it was only us two, the realm would be fine. It’due south the meddling and the peacocking and egos that completely muddy everything.”

There is also a focus on childbirth and its inherent dangers, a story thread that feels timely in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning
Roe v. Wade. “The child bed is our battleground” is how one female
Dragon
graphic symbol puts it and, indeed, the first flavour does for giving birth what
Game of Thrones
did for weddings.

“In medieval times, giving nascence was violence,” Sapochnik says. “It’s as dangerous as it gets. You have a 50/50 chance of making information technology. We have a number of births in the evidence and basically decided to give them different themes and explore them from unlike perspectives the same way I did for a bunch of battles on
Thrones.”

Sapochnik says the production also “pulls back” on the corporeality of sexual practice in the series while adding glimpses of how sex is a nonchalant aspect of Targaryen life. Violence against women is withal very much part of the world. Sapochnik says the duo’s approach is done “carefully, thoughtfully and [nosotros] don’t shy away from it. If anything, nosotros’re going to shine a lite on that aspect. You tin can’t ignore the violence that was perpetrated on women by men in that time. It shouldn’t be downplayed and it shouldn’t be glorified.”

A 2nd controversy surrounding the original series was the show’s lack of actors of color in lead roles.
Dragon
faced an even bigger claiming to stay authentic to its source material as, allow’s face up information technology, the Targaryens are the whitest family in fiction.

“We knew from the outset that we wanted to change that conversation,” Condal says. “The world inverse a lot betwixt 2011 and 2021 and [so did] what audiences look to see on camera. The conversations Miguel and I had were: How do nosotros create a diverse cast for
Firm of the Dragon
only still do it in a way that feels organic to the world and doesn’t feel like pandering or tokenism — and likewise accept them not be pirates, slaves and mercenaries similar y’all tend to see in loftier fantasies?”

Condal and Sapochnik cast Steve Toussaint (Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time) as a powerful character who is white in the book: Lord Corlys Velaryon, aka The Sea Ophidian. Velaryon is descended from Onetime Valyria like the Targaryens and is the wealthiest man in Westeros after completing 9 map-expanding voyages.

“He’due south very much like: ‘I’m telling you the truth,’” Toussaint says. “‘I don’t care if I hurt your feelings.’ On the battlefield, it’s much simpler — you’re trying to kill me, I’chiliad trying to kill you — and I think he likes that.”

Even so Toussaint was in for an ugly shock when his casting was announced. Some fans reacted to the start Black actor being added to a pb part in a
Thrones
testify by hurling racial abuse and epithets. It’s the latest example of a fantasy franchise’southward fandom showing a toxic side when actors of color are added in major roles.

“I didn’t realize [the casting] was a big bargain until I was racially abused on social media,” says Toussaint. “Yeah, that shit happened. I was merely like, ‘Oh wow,’ and and then I idea: ‘OK, then this ways a lot to some people, just I can’t permit that to bother me.’”

Toussaint points out that while Martin’s world is a fantasy, “information technology still has to reflect a world.”

“I loved
Game of Thrones, but my but caveat was, ‘Where’s everybody else in this world?’” he says. “Because information technology’southward a diverse earth Martin has created if you look [beyond Westeros], and I recall this show comes closer to that.”

The diversity boost is behind the camera, as well, such every bit having four of the 10 episodes directed by female directors (Clare Kilner and Geeta Patel) and launching multiple mentorship programs to recruit coiffure talent with underrepresented backgrounds. “We worked actually hard to ensure that there was real variety across our entire transport,” HBO’s evp Francesca Orsi says.

The Wars to Come up

When Condal and Sapochnik decided they had a decent cut of the offset episode of
House of the Dragon, they sent Martin a individual viewing link. And waited.

“George is not an effusive guy,” Condal says. “But he loved the pilot so much that Miguel and I both got text messages with more exclamation points than I’ve ever seen in 1 place from that man.”

Martin has since viewed ix of the 10 episodes in various stages, and his excitement has merely grown. “It’due south powerful, it’s visceral, it’s dark, it’due south like a Shakespearean tragedy,” he says of the testify. “In that location’s no Arya — a grapheme everybody’s going to love. They’re all flawed. They’re all man. They practise good things. They do bad things. They’re driven by lust for power, jealousy, quondam wounds — just like human beings. Just like I wrote them.”

HBO plans to debut the series Aug. 21, ii weeks earlier Amazon unveils its megabudget
Lord of the Rings
series
The Rings of Power
(Dragon
cost south of $200 million;
Rings
cost near a half-billion, partly as a result of securing rights from author J.R.R. Tolkien’south manor). Ironically, Martin wrote
A Song of Ice and Fire
as a vicious reality-check response to
The Lord of the Rings, and so Amazon greenlit
Rings
in reaction to the success of
Thrones. The prospect of both shows rolling out episodes during the same weeks has many passing the popcorn.

For Martin, any rivalry betwixt the shows is a mummer’southward farce (that is, foolish). “We’re non even on the same nighttime!” Martin says. “It’s not a death match or annihilation. I wish them success. I hope they wish for our success. Nosotros don’t take to be bracketed together.”

How many viewers volition prove up for
Dragon
is a question that everybody is highly curious about.
Thrones
opened to a mere two.two million viewers in the U.Due south. and concluded with 19.three million overnight viewers across all platforms. HBO is prepared to greenlight a second flavour of
Dragon
very apace afterwards the show’s debut if the ratings are loftier enough. The network naturally won’t specify a number, but Orsi says, “I don’t retrieve anybody is thinking this show will pick up, from a ratings perspective, right where
Thrones
left off.”

Hanging over the premiere is lingering chatter nigh the blowback against
Thrones
season eight. It’s another irony for the pile that the same prove responsible for
Dragon
beingness then hugely predictable is also a source of hand-wringing about its reception.

“The fucking toxic cyberspace and these podcasts out there saying that flavour eight left such a bad impression that people say, ‘Oh, I’chiliad never going to sentry them again,’” Martin says. “I don’t trust them anymore.”

“Information technology was a
social media
backlash,” Bloys says, sounding weary of the subject. “I think in multiple parts of our society, we are reminding ourselves that Twitter is not real life. We knew it was going to be divisive and, of class, you want all fans to be happy, but that’s never going to happen. At that place weren’t a lot of people walking effectually despondent or upset. It’s a take that reads well but probably doesn’t fully reflect viewer feelings.”

To be fair, it’southward not difficult to detect
Thrones
fans in real life who are besides critical of the ending. Even so it seems highly likely that viewers who loved the original series and Martin’s books will feel compelled to cheque out the new show too.

And more than than just
Dragon
likely rides on the show’s performance. HBO has four live-activeness
Thrones
shows in development — including its first proposed sequel, a Jon Snowfall spinoff starring Kit Harington, along with a Dunk and Egg series (Martin’s early on pitch was eventually put into evolution under author Steve Conrad) and a show focused on The Body of water Snake’due south nine voyages from writer Bruno Heller (which, if greenlit, would bandage a younger role player than the 57-year-old Toussaint). At that place are likewise three blithe projects — possibly iv — in the works.

“The animated shows are coming along great,” enthuses Martin, who compares the various animated styles to Netflix’s acclaimed
Honey Expiry + Robots. “The concept art is absolutely stunning.”

Following WarnerMedia’south recent merger with Discovery, there’s maybe a bigger question marker hanging over the other projects than before, as other high-profile titles such as J.J. Abrams’ sci-fi epic
Demimonde
are existence axed. Executives clinch that the corporate tremors won’t touch on the franchise. “At that place accept been no conversations other than everybody is excited about
Dragon,” Bloys says, with Orsi concurring: “If four of these scripts came in and they were all peachy, I would say, ‘I need to brand all of them.’ I don’t have my dominate or his boss telling me, ‘This is the mission.’”

For Martin, the author has long dreamt his fantasy world would expand its wings to bring together the ranks of other vast amusement universes. “The MCU has
The Avengers, but they also have something offbeat similar
WandaVision,” he says. “That’s what I hope we can practice with these other
Game of Thrones
shows, and so we can accept a variety that showcases the history of this globe. There are only so many times you lot can practise a contest for the Atomic number 26 Throne.”

At the same time, the author — who, yes, is also grinding away on his long-awaited penultimate
Ice and Fire
novel
The Winds of Winter
— can’t assistance but wonder about his future every bit a franchise creator.

“Sometimes I sit effectually trying to figure out who the hell I am in this whole scenario,” Martin muses candidly. “Am I George Lucas? Am I Gene Roddenberry? Am I Stan Lee? How do I relate to this IP? Because those are 3 unlike stories equally to where they wound up.”

“Which would you lot want to be?” I enquire.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “Not Stan Lee at the end. He had no power, no influence. He wasn’t writing any stories. He couldn’t say, ‘Don’t do this character.’ He was just a friendly person they brought to conventions and who did cameos. To be sidelined on the world and characters that yous created, that would be tough.”

But first,
Dragon
needs to get off the ground. If it does, Condal and Sapochnik are thankfully not in the same position Benioff and Weiss were in when they launched
Thrones
with only four of Martin’south planned 7
A Song of Ice and Fire
books written. The
Dragon
showrunners know their ending and take a plan for the product to run a sure number of seasons.

Asked if HBO is on board with their plan, Condal replies, “They are — today,” so wryly adds: “Endings are the easiest thing to practise in television set.”

Sources say the show’s civil war arc might be shorter than you might await. While nothing is carved in rock, the current Targaryen storyline is currently plotted to run only most three or four seasons. But even that might not marker the finish of the testify.
Dragon
could, in theory, then leap decades forwards in time, or backward, to chronicle other major events in the Targaryen dynasty with an entirely new cast — such every bit exploring Aegon’s conquest or the Doom of Valyria.

“The Targaryens span both directions,” Sapochnik says. “So as a spine to other possible stories and spinoffs … this is a great place to start.”

This story first appeared in the July 20 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.