Inside House of the Dragon

Over eight seasons, Game of Thrones delivered to HBO record viewership across the globe, much fodder for watercooler conversation, almost 60 Primetime Emmy Awards, including four for outstanding drama series, and a raft of other honors. The ending of the show—based on George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series of fantasy novels—back in 2019, and creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’ subsequent decampment to Netflix, left many wondering what a post-GoT future would look like for the premium cabler. As it turns out, the home of Succession and Insecure and a raft of other critical darlings, under the leadership of Casey Bloys, has had no problem kindling new cultural juggernauts. But the brand is clearly important to HBO and its sister streaming platform, HBO Max, with a slew of prequels and sequels in development. This weekend, fans across the globe will be eagerly tuning into the first extension of the franchise, House of the Dragon, with Warner Bros. Discovery putting the promotional might of its global footprint behind the launch.

Debuting Sunday on HBO and HBO Max (the streamer will bring the show to 61 countries across the Americas and Europe), plus on partners such as Sky, House of the Dragon is based on Martin’s Fire & Blood, chronicling the Targaryen family saga 200 years before the events that unfold in Game of Thrones. Created by Martin with Ryan Condal, the ten-episode production features a cast that includes Matt Smith, Paddy Considine, Emma D’Arcy and Rhys Ifans. Condal, executive producer and writer, is co-running the show with Miguel Sapochnik, executive producer and director who worked on several Game of Thrones episodes, including the acclaimed “Battle of the Bastards,” for which he won an Emmy Award.

“After the original show ended, there were a number of different spin-offs that were being tossed around,” Sapochnik tells TV Drama. “HBO kept asking me if I would meet the writers of the various spin-offs and loosely attach myself to a project. I had been working with Ryan on a different project. He got involved in one of the spin-offs and asked if I was interested. Ironically, it was probably not the one I was most interested in because it was most similar to what I had already done. But we had a good working relationship, and I wanted to be helpful. I said, I will help until I know what it is I want to do, but I’m not going to commit to anything because I don’t know whether I want to go back to that world.”

The turning point, Sapochnik says, came following a suggestion from Alexis Raben, his wife and creative partner. “She has a line into current world affairs that is very different from mine. I was on the verge of saying, I don’t think this is for me because I can’t find the thing that makes it different. And she said, This would be much more interesting if it were told from the female characters’ perspective.”

Key to the sprawling story is the relationship between Princess Rhaenyra, eldest child of King Viserys I Targaryen, and Alicent Hightower, daughter of Ser Otto Hightower, the Hand of the King. “Originally, one was a woman; one was a girl. [We decided to] give them a shared childhood, so they grew up together. Suddenly you have an opportunity to talk about the patriarchy—but through the eyes of these women. It was no longer going back and seeing more boys with toys. [Game of Thrones] had great female characters, but it wasn’t told from their point of view. Here was an opportunity to do that and be pointed about it. In retrospect, I can’t imagine the show in any other way. Ironically, it’s served the male characters as well. Both Paddy (Considine) and Matt (Smith) [who respectively play Viserys and his younger brother, Daemon] had to deal with a shift in emphasis. The show wasn’t just about them. Consciously or unconsciously, it affected their performances and got them in touch with things they might not otherwise have been in touch with. It’s benefited everybody.”

Chronicling the conflicts within the dragon-wielding Targaryen clan as they exert their control over the Seven Kingdoms, the show jumps forward in time at several points within the first season, Sapochnik explains. “Episodes one and two are in one period; three, four and five are three or four years later; and then there’s a ten-year time jump and a six-year time jump. That’s been complicated and a challenge and something I originally felt quite resistant to because it was reestablishing characters when you’re missing so much of their lives. The only way to approach this was to treat it like French movie-making—they explain nothing! Catch up, pay attention. Once we approached it that way, it got a lot easier. You didn’t have these long expository scenes—here’s what’s been happening in the castle as of late. You’re coming in on events that could not have happened without the passage of time. And then it was about figuring out the realities of what that means for set design, costume, etc., because everything evolves. And then the actors—some change, some don’t. How we divided that up was quite hard. In the end, we realized that the time jump of ten years—when it happens and what happens to them in that interim period—was such that they could play different characters, and that’s OK. That was a relief. We had explored giving them physical tics and traits that carry over, but everything felt a little contrived. It’s a good crutch, but in the end, you didn’t need it. If someone is ten years older at 20, maybe there are some similarities, but you don’t sit there and go, I remember when you used to pick your nose!”

Working on bringing the show to the screen for more than two years—the initial location scout started just before the first Covid-19 lockdown—Sapochnik and Condal have developed a system for best managing the sprawling enterprise. “Time has not been on our side, and it has made everything more complicated. When we first started, we agreed not to do anything apart. For the first year, we would do every meeting, every phone call, every everything, together. Then you get to the reality of, if there are two of you, the natural expectation is you can do twice as much if you don’t do it together. If you don’t have any time, the first thing you do is bifurcate. We were being forced to be in different places. There have been challenges to do with what the role of a showrunner is when you’re a director and what the role of a showrunner is when you’re a writer. If I direct and he writes, we still need to be able to be in each other’s stuff. I also write and am good at structure. Those things are important to me. Likewise, for him, seeing his idea through from its initiation, whatever theme may be in a script, to the final product and making sure I understand what he’s going for. There’s a negotiation between us that’s constant. But also, at some point, you have to accept that I can’t be there, so I have to trust you.”

Sapochnik is aware of fan expectations about the new show—and he’s not letting any of that rattle him. “My responsibility is to the story. I think about it inasmuch as it’s important to not think about it and to focus on the task ahead. This isn’t Game of Thrones; it’s House of the Dragon. So yes, there’s a Red Keep, there are Targaryens, and there are dragons. But you know, Elizabeth and The Last of the Mohicans, I’m sure, have some similarities; it’s just that they’re completely different! The responsibility I have to the fans is to make sure I do the best job I can of telling this story. And through it, if they find their way back to a relationship with the Game of Thrones world, fantastic. If they don’t, so be it. And if even better, it makes them go back and say, I’m going to watch season eight; maybe it wasn’t quite what I thought it was. I do want to do justice to this story. That’s the only thing I can do.”