In August 2022, we interviewed Ryan Condal, showrunner for House of the Dragon! You can watch this episode on YouTube here, or listen to it in podcast form here. You can find Ryan’s podcast, The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of, here. You can find our season 2 interview with Ryan here, and our interview with George R.R. Martin here.
We are also including a transcription below, under the cut, for those who prefer to read their interviews, but we hope you check out the video!
Ashaya: We’re here with Ryan Condal, one of the showrunners for House of the Dragon. Ryan has done the television show Colony, but most relevant to y’all will be the fact that he has a podcast all about props. It’s called The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of, and he hosts it with David Mandel, who is known for Veep, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seinfeld, and more. It’s a great listen, so check it out and let them know that History of Westeros sent you.
Aziz: So there’s two episodes in the book at this point, and obviously it’s been a fantastic reaction. I listened to your podcast, Stuff Dreams are Made Of and that was super fun.
Ryan: We will actually be doing… I’m gonna have… try to have some people on from the show, more like artisans that build stuff, cause I think more specific to the show. So I think this season we’re gonna come back in the fall and, uh, soonish and definitely it’s still, it’s still a show about, you know, collecting, but I think there’s a lot of interest now that we can actually have people on and talk about the stuff that they built for the show.
So we’re gonna do a bit of that and I think we’re gonna come right outta the gate with, uh, somebody, uh, very near and dear to my heart that worked on the show. So yeah, Stuff Dreams are Made Of, please subscribe and give a listen.
Aziz: Yeah.
Ryan: It’s interesting stuff.
Aziz: I’ve really liked it. I, I listened to you talking with Tim, who is the armorer.
Ryan: Yeah, Tim Lewis.
Aziz: It’s a perfect example of the type of person that we could expect to hear from, from you. And your cohost, David made a great joke there, talking about you and House of the Dragon and how you’re a collector of props and things like that. And he made the joke that it’s like putting a heroin addict in charge of the heroin factory, which… that does seem like an apt thing, you being such a fan of props. So let me ask you, let… lemme see.
Maybe we, we got a little conspiracy theory here. Is this whole thing just a way to fuel your habit? House of the Dragon is all just your props habit here.
Ryan: Yeah. Dave and I have also joked about that. He’s like, really, the best way, if you’re a collector is just to sort of, you know, spend 15 years, you know, learning a craft and then go and create a genre fiction show, and then create a bunch of stuff within the show, and then make the show and just steal the stuff from the show and thus, you know, it’s, it’s essentially a perpetual motion machine, right? It’s, it’s, there is no wasted energy, there.
Aziz: Simple as that.
Ryan: Yeah. So, so it’s a good plan. I mean, I, that’s not why I got into it, but the thought did occur to me as I was, you know, taking parchments home with me every day from, from work.
Aziz: Well, I’ll give an extra teaser for your show and we’ll give people a little extra incentive to listen, which is that you teased some sort of prop, some item that was an original that was used in the show, that was like the first thing you grabbed for yourself. And you said it was maybe damaged in a certain way during a stunt, so he’s gonna reveal one day what that is. So tune in, folks.
Ryan: I will, and yes, that episode has not happened yet, but I did take a banged up one home with me from a particular scene that has not happened.
Aziz: So it wasn’t a scene from the first two episodes, alright, so we know that much.
Ryan: Correct.
Aziz: Yeah, that’s cool. There’s a question from someone who’s interacted with your show that’s a listener of our show as well, Taylor Lineberry, who asks,
Ryan: Okay.
Aziz: Will any of the House of the Dragon props make it to auction you think, or is that maybe too hard to predict at this point, or?
Ryan: I don’t know, I mean, at this point… I mean, it’s always hard to predict. You just never know where this stuff goes. My hope is that at some point they would do something like that. And I will certainly encourage that when, you know, when the time comes, just because I think it’s such a great, you know, fan outreach thing.
Aziz: Yeah.
Ryan: Just a great way to share the show with the fans. And I mean, you can imagine, you haven’t seen the containers and containers, and we just make so much stuff for the show, that there’s, even with a robust archive and multiple museum exhibits, touring exhibits, there’s always more stuff than you could possibly keep. And multiples and things like that because it is a, you know, very high end show, everything on the show is bespoke.
So there’s just so much of it. And at some point it just becomes so onerous to keep it all, that I think that’s actually a really cool way to, you know, dispose of something where it doesn’t end up in a landfill, and it’s done in an official way. Um, things always sneak out the back door of shows like this, I imagine they would.
Well, they did on the original show. I’ve seen things that are not supposed to be out there, um, that have been shown to me. But not in an official capacity. So nothing really happened with the original show in an official capacity, which surprised me given how many seasons went on. I guess we shall see.
Aziz: Yeah, I could imagine seeing the bidding on a giant Balerion skull.
Ryan: That thing is so huge. It’s, it’s like the size of a Ford F-150. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s gigantic. I don’t know who would have room for that thing. I certainly don’t, but that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t bid on it.
Aziz: Yeah.
Ryan: I don’t have room.
Ashaya: How much bigger is the Balerion skull on set compared to the one… you were at ComicCon, we went to ComicCon as well, and saw the one in the Dragon’s Den…. How much bigger is the on set one?
Ryan: Yeah.
Ashaya: Is it about the same size?
Ryan: It’s comparable, but I would say plus 25%, maybe plus 20%. Yeah, the teeth were the real tell to me, cuz the teeth on the real prop are, you know, properly, like, you know, short swords… Long daggers, however you wanna look at it, as described in the book. But yeah, it’s enormous. I mean, it’s enormous and you can see, it’s not a visual trick, like when Viserys and Rhaenyra are standing under it in the pilot. They’re right in front of it. And it’s there.
The prop is actually right there. It’s not a green screen effect or a forced perspective or an element or anything. That’s in there. It’s up on a big plinth. You can see how, you know, Paddy is… Paddy’s six foot. He’s my height.
Aziz: Wow.
Ryan: It towers over him. It’s absolutely massive.
Aziz: That’s fantastic. Well, one of the props slash set pieces that has caught a huge amount of attention, especially in our corner and just in general is the just incredibly awesome Valyria model. Can you, that Viserys is working on, can you talk to us about anything to do with that? Like where the idea came from, how it was made, just how much, how awesome it is…
Cause I just stared at it last night with… there’s the overhead shot in episode two and I freeze framed it and just stared at it for a while and just kind of let my imagination run wild on the possibilities. It’s so beautiful.
Ryan: Yeah, it’s great. It was built by our big props team and that’s the same team that made Balerion’s skull, the same team that made the Iron Throne.
The team that made the, you haven’t seen it yet, but the artifacts in the Sea Snake’s great hall. You saw a little…
Ashaya: We saw a little bit.
Ryan: In episode two, yeah. So anything kind of massive you know, you can’t take to set in a briefcase, that’s considered a proper big piece of bespoke set dec they make.
And that idea actually came out of the writers room and we were looking for, you know, the joke in the writers room is sort of like, I feel like Viserys would have a train set, you know, that he would be, he’d be working on. Like, what’s, what’s the medieval version, what’s the Westerosi version of a train set?
And it came around to Viserys being a, steeped in history. And we know that, you know, in, in the book, he’s kind of cast as this sort of, you know, lighthearted king who likes his feasts and his balls and his hunts and things like that. And Viserys definitely has that streak to him. You know, he does have that bit, oh, I wish I could just retire and go out to the country, slough off this responsibility that I have.
But I think the underlying thing, the more interesting complex wrinkle to him is that he’s… he carries this burden, that, you know, he shared with Rhaenyra in the first episode. He is deeply steeped in Valyrian history.
And I think that was the thing that we came around to is like… Oh, it’s interesting that Viserys actually has this really deep kind of scholarly knowledge of Valyrian history, and doesn’t know it cursorily the way I think a lot of people, even other Targaryens do. They take all the important bits, like yeah, yeah, fire and blood and dragons, and, you know, we’re closer to gods than men. Yeah. I got, I’ve got all that stuff, whereas Viserys has actually studied it and will talk about it as the season goes on. And it felt like his obsession with that history would lead to other things in a hobby. And then, you know, thus, and so you go and it’s like, oh, wouldn’t it be cool if he was building a model of the city center of old Valyria that he’s reconstructed from, as he tells Alicent, the histories, the text, the drawings that exist. And this is considered to be, you know, at this time, a very accurate re representation because, you know, he’s the king, he’s very rich. He can source whatever rare book he wants from any corner of the world that survived with descriptions of, drawings of Old Valyria.
And he’s doing much the job that Archmaester Gyldayn did, which is sifting through historical accounts and trying to find the best ones to, you know, create. So this is definitely an… it’s an idealized version of Valyria. I wouldn’t say that it’s the actual city, cuz no one would know cause it was blown up and we didn’t have film or photographs. That’s the idea behind it and this idea that, you know, as you know, the show takes place over some years, particularly this season. You also see it, uh, kind of evolve as time passes on.
Aziz: Yeah. That was a great way to show the passage of time. We noted that between episode one and two and it helps.
Ryan: Mm-hmm.
Aziz: One of the many ways to show the passage of time. It’s a, it’s a great visual for that. It’s also just great to look at in general.
Ryan: It’s amazing.
Aziz: Yeah, it really is. Could be hard for you to walk out the back door with that one though, huh? It’s a bit large.
Ryan: Correct. It is in, it is in sections. It is in sections thankfully, but yes, that’s a tough one. It’s funny because you talk about the experience of working on this show.
Every other show that I’ve worked on, you envision this thing in your head, and then you ask somebody to build it and they bring it in and you’re like, oh, okay. Yeah, that’ll work. This show, everything that came was always, first of all, 10 times greater than you thought, and 10 times bigger than that.
When I first saw that thing, and they were like, no, no, no, that’s just the… I was like, that’s amazing. And they’re like, oh, that’s just the, um, that’s just the city center. We actually have seven more pieces…
Ashaya: Oh, wow.
Aziz: Wow.
Ryan: That we’re building, that we’re bringing. I was like, what? And eventually, you know, you see it, it, it kind of takes over the apartments in an interesting way. I love it. And it’s dragon scale. So you see all those, the little dragons that Viserys is holding.
Aziz: Yeah.
Ryan: And that’s, that’s sort of a Drogon scale, so you can imagine how big that thing is.
Aziz: Yeah. Huge. Yeah.
Ryan: It’s really cool, cuz they built the city. They were a culture of dragons, so they built the city to the scale of their gods.
Aziz: Yeah.
Ryan: And, I think, I think that’s really fascinating.
Aziz: It is. It’s reflected. You could see like where they would land and yeah. Just all this, the space is made for them.
Ashaya: I suppose I have a question. Which came first, the concept to have Viserys have a model of Valyria or to have it be the opening credits.
Aziz: Hmm. Yeah.
Ashaya: Which built off one another?
Ryan: Yeah. I mean it sort of, one fed the other. I mean, the credits were done much later cuz we shot the show before the credits, but the idea with the credits was always to try to create a representation of Old Valyria. With the sense that the credits are this kind of unknowable technology from Old Valyria, as a way that they have of tracking their genealogy. Again, a representation of it. We don’t really know what we’re looking at. But trust in that the, you know, blood mages and the people that kept track of genealogy back in Valyria where they had all their crazy technology and magics would’ve known exactly what that was. That’s, that’s the sort of idea that we’re going into. And then with the, you know, the model being the sort of impetus for the creation of that.
Aziz: That’s really cool. Yeah. That’s, that’s fascinating. It must have been a lot of fun to try to imagine some of that stuff. It brings up another question. The supernatural elements in the show, in the first Game of Thrones, they maybe were reluctant to include some of the supernatural elements, even though there’s very powerful supernatural elements throughout it. In Fire and Blood, there’s less of that, of course, so it was a surprise, a very good, happy surprise that this stuff about Aegon’s dream was included. It gave us a lot to talk about, a lot to think about, and added that supernatural element. Can you talk to us maybe about your approach for not just that particular plot point, but just how to handle the supernatural, how to handle things like that in this setting, what your approach was?
Ryan: Yeah, I mean, yeah, you, you have to do so with a deft hand. I mean, I, I love what George did in the original books was, he, well, he opens with that, you know, banger of a chapter, the prologue of the first book, which tells you that this is a fantasy world, but then, then you don’t go back to it quickly. And what happens in that chapter, which I always love in the way he wrote it. Even though those characters inhabit this fantasy world, that stuff is really scary and out of world to them, so you know that it’s rare and it hasn’t happened, so you know it’s special. And then he takes a long time before he dips back into that world and goes back there. I mean, you know, in terms of the first book, I mean, we get a little bit of a sense that maybe something’s going on with Varys, and then I think the other big thing that happens is the hatching of the dragons, right?
Aziz: Mm-hmm.
Ryan: I mean, there’s not… I don’t think we get into Faceless Men… direwolves of course come around, but those more seem… That seems like an event, but those seem like more of a, you know, finding a crypto creature.
Aziz: Yeah, well the wolf dreams don’t start till book two, you’re right. So they got the direwolves, but the supernatural…
Ryan: Yeah, all the warging.
Aziz: The real deep stuff doesn’t come till a bit later, you’re right.
Ryan: Yeah. So he immerses you into it. He doesn’t just come at you with all this kind of high magic and high fantasy. I’ve always really liked that. And I actually like what David and Dan did a lot in the original series cuz they played even more coy with it, to draw people into the real elements of the show and then they kind of built on that and came out with it. So they didn’t turn off the, uh, sort of snobby adults that were coming, pretending that they were watching a, uh, you know, a palace intrigue piece, a you know, historical fiction piece.
With Fire and Blood, you know, as you pointed out, the magical element there is really just dragons, and a bit of dreams.
Aziz: Yeah.
Ryan: Targaryen dreams and things. It’s essentially the magic that’s related to the Targaryens and little else. So we wanted to keep the sense of that alive, cuz it is very much alive in Westeros and you know, George himself talks about, when there are dragons around the magic is more alive in the world.
So how do we keep that alive and remind people that this is a world where prophecies come true, where things are foreseen and then do happen, where magic does exist. We know that there is blood magic and then there’s all sorts of, you know, greenseeing and you know, the weirwoods and all those things that we know from the original series, but I didn’t wanna just, you know, dump it on the narrative. So it’s, how do you find places and storylines where you can remind people that that stuff is still alive. I mean, the dragons really help because they are cool and they’re, you know, a very visual reminder that we live in a fantasy world. But I also love what George did with all the prophecy and the clever way that he built that stuff over, you know, decades and, and some of it still hasn’t paid off in the books.
Aziz: Yeah, for sure.
Ryan: But we know it’s going to. And that’s what, you know, drew us back to the dream. When George told us about, you know, Aegon being a dreamer. And that having been kept from the written history, that felt like a great place to go. Cuz that felt like something that the Targaryens could carry and you can play with ideas, you know, within that.
We also know where that history goes, so that makes it in itself interesting and, and turns it on its ear the way George always does with his writing. And this isn’t just gonna go to a clean end where you find the chosen one and it’s Neo and he saves the Matrix. You know it doesn’t go that way.
Aziz: See, the letters N E O are in Aegon, so I really thought… no…
Ryan: That’s true. And you can’t spell Targaryen without Ryan, I’ll just give you that.
Aziz: Damn. How did I miss that one?
Ashaya: So on the subject of the dream, in various interviews, it seems to me that George provided you with the information that Aegon was a dreamer and y’all filled in the gaps of what the ramifications of that could be, how that could go. You spoke about how you decided to build on that by having him pass that down to future generations. Is that the sort of thing that you come up with, and then you run it by George and see how, what he thinks of it? How much of this is like a consultation, a collaboration? What’s the process like there, the back and forth, are you just texting him every day?
Ryan: I do text him every day. He texted me, he texted me today. Yeah, it’s an organic process and I definitely, with big things like that, I do really try to involve him as much as I can. I mean, some of it is acknowledging that there is show canon and book canon and we now know that those two things are different. They have to be because, you know, the show is different than the books, so we are show canon. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not attempting to do the thing that I promised right out at the outset, which is render a very faithful adaptation of Fire and Blood. But trying to do so in a way that also provides connectivity to the original show, and that requires certain things to be modified, to be invented in some cases. Also just the nature of Fire and Blood being a history book, we are told that events happened. We don’t know how and why they happened. We don’t see the POV chapter that’s the scene between Alicent and Viserys in, you know, in his bed chamber, but we can imagine something like that happened to lead to the thing that’s actually in the historical record.
Aziz: Yeah.
Ryan: So I’m constantly playing with all that stuff. And when big things do come along, I really do try to, you know, share them with George, pitch them to George, run them past George. Also he’s reading things all the way as we go along, he’s reading scripts, he’s seeing cuts as… I mean, cuts is a bit late, but he’s reading scripts as they go along and hears the season pitch when we have it, and, you know, big things I try to run past him. Sometimes I ask Ti to go, to go run it past him.
Ashaya: Lovely.
Ryan: And also, you know, she’s really good having a sense of things that he will like, or possibly things that are more of a discussion with him.
Aziz: Yeah, she’s worked with him a long time.
Ryan: Yeah. So it’s, it is a really organic process, and I think a respectful one. I mean, he understands that I have a very different job than he does, and I have to render a thing to present it on television and also justify the massive cost of the show and draw in a massive audience.
So you know, we’re always playing with multiple masters, the biggest of which to me is George and his lore, but sometimes that stuff can’t be 100% fully serviced. But I try to do it as much and often as I can so that he knows and sees the truth, which is that I deeply, deeply care about his material.
Aziz: That’s great. And that does shine through, I mean, obviously we’ve only seen two episodes, but we can tell. There’s so many small details that reflect that care and the fans, the fans really notice that. I mean, you know, this is an obsessive fandom and detail oriented fandom, so yeah, I think that’s, it’s going great, we’re so happy.
Another question, what are some of your favorite eras in Fire and Blood? Was this one of the ones that you were particularly drawn to, or is this just the one that you… of course in some way you must have been, but how much of this was what you wanted to do versus you thought this was the best story to put on screen?
Ryan: I think it definitely was the one to come out of the gate with. And I’ve talked about this before in other interviews, so, pardon if I’m repeating myself. But I felt like this particular story had the most thematic connectivity with the original tale, A Song of Ice and Fire. Because this is the thing that we know as book readers leads, essentially leads, to the decline, because of the mistakes made in this period. And even though it’s 170 years before, even before Daenerys’ birth, it’s 200 years before we meet Waymar Royce, uh, ranging north of the Wall.
It does have a ton of resonance with the original series and it is the counterpoint. It’s like, there’s the empire and decline. This is the empire at its very height. So I think for all those reasons, it did feel like the one to come out of the gate with. It was the first real Targaryen history that I’d been exposed to because of Princess and the Queen and The Rogue Prince.
You know, George, when I got the job, he handed me the galley for Fire and Blood, cuz it was a few months before it had been published. Which of course I, as a fan, freaked out, went home and you know, consumed like, you know, like a raccoon behind a dumpster finding a Krispy Kreme donut.
Aziz: Perfect.
Ryan: And I really, I loved, I really loved it all. I mean, I think as a book nerd, I most enjoyed the Jaehaerys period.
Aziz: Nice.
Ryan: Because it’s so classic George, which is like, everything’s going great on the surface and his family is tearing him apart piece by piece from within, and all of the interesting character dynamics that are going on within that.
And also Jaehaerys is sort of a tortured guy who is trying to be the best king he can, and he’s taken this oath and there’s a little bit of Viserys in him, our Viserys at least. There’s a little bit of, um, Rhaegar in him, I think too.
Aziz: Yeah.
Ryan: This guy who’s trying to live up to… a little bit of Jon Snow too.
Aziz: Mm-hmm.
Ryan: Guy who realizes that he has this burden of a certain birth. And then is trying to own up to it and keep up to it, by training and by studying and building roads and traveling the empire and getting to know his other lords. And I was really fascinated by all that, and I just, I love that as a book nerd.
I think that’s more of a challenging adaptation because it is a family drama told, and you know, there is no threat from the North or threat from Essos or civil war to fight. But those are the two sections of the book, Jaehaerys and the Dance, that really, really snagged me.
I think I really… Once you hit Jaehaerys, to me, you really kind of tear through the rest of the book pretty quickly.
Then just as a fan, I, I wanna read about the Blackfyre Rebellions.
Aziz: Yeah, oh right on, yeah, we’ve dedicated a lot of podcasting time to that, yeah, right. We love, yeah, the big empty spot in The World of Ice and Fire where he’s like, oh, this is where Blackfyre Three is going to be, but I haven’t written it yet. So yeah, we’re waiting for that. Some day, some day, right?
So speaking of Jaehaerys, this is kind of a random question, but we thought it was fun. The throne that Jaehaerys is sitting on at the beginning. That’s a fantastic prop or item or whatever, whatever we’d call that. I don’t know what it’s really made of, for all we know, it’s a piece of styrofoam, but is there any thought to where that came from? It was a kind of a random question we got, like maybe the Sea Snake found that on one of his journeys. Is that kind of thing that, that ever gets discussed in the background? Like I know that you guys are all… have some, some nerdiness in you to add that detail.
Ryan: No…We do talk a bit about it. Some of it gets written into the script. That was not, that was our wonderful set dec and props team going hog on that. But I think the idea there was simply, we’re at Harrenhal, we’re not at home.
Aziz: Yeah.
Ryan: If he was at home, he’d probably be sitting on the Iron Throne.
Aziz: True.
Ryan: Um, but he’s gone there for this kind of once in a, sort of once in a dynasty event, right? And this is the Targaryen empire at its height, and they’re trying to project, you know, strength and confidence and I think wealth and power and you know, do not challenge us, do not challenge the vote as it comes.
So even though it’s in Harrenhal and it’s a few weeks march away from King’s Landing, they probably built a bunch of stuff to go and represent themselves in the Great Hall.
Aziz: Yeah.
Ryan: So, what would Jaehaerys or Jaehaerys’ council and close counselors have built for him to project this kind of dynastic power at an event like this. Where you’re literally going to be standing before every lord in the kingdom demanding their fealty.
Aziz: You made the point about that being the actor who played Bib Fortuna, Michael Carter, it almost looks like Jabba’s plinth. It’s like, he’s really, it’s like he’s taken his old master’s spot there.
Important question, I think, for understanding how this was adapted, and I think something that you’ve briefly touched on in other interviews. You’ve worked on other TV shows before you have quite a bit of experience here, but this is a very different script. At least the source material. Obviously you didn’t just take Fire and Blood, and use it as a script, but as an adaptation, that’s a very different thing to have to base the show off of than what you normally have. Talk to us a little bit about how that made things different, how that affected your process. And maybe how that allowed some of the actors like Emily Carey, as an example, her journaling in character. Was that an extension of all that, allowing the actors to have more room, given that the source material has this extra room in it?
Ryan: Yeah, I mean, it’s definitely a fascinating challenge as an adapting writer, because it is kind of wholly unique. I mean, I was trying to think of another example of something like that, a fictional piece of nonfiction, the closest I could get was the Silmarillion.
Aziz: Yeah.
Ryan: But the Silmarillion has never been adapted, and the Silmarillion’s even written a little bit more like prose.
So this is really like you know, if I was adapting a medieval history book on the Anarchy or something like that. Where you do your best to draw as much from the history as you can, and then you realize that there’s a bit of dramatic invention that you have to do.
The latitude that I think it brings is exciting, because it’s challenging. But there are some times where we’re sitting there and we just wish we had a little bit more, you know, material to hang our hat on, to move the narrative on. It definitely has its features and its, and its um, its flaws.
Aziz: Hmm.
Ryan: Not, not that it’s a flawed book, just in terms of the adaptation exercise.
Aziz: Right.
Ryan: In terms of the actors, I mean, you know, Emily’s a great example, a wonderful actor, really smart, you know, about wholly realizing this character. I think when they’re talking about their backstory and things like that, they’re more talking about emotions and things that, you know, wouldn’t necessarily… I mean, most of that stuff, I mean, she, she showed it to, to us at some point, to Miguel and I, but I, I think it was more of an emotional history.
Aziz: Okay.
Ryan: To help her get to where she needed to be as an actor in that place. I mean, she’s not essentially, she’s not sitting down, writing like, Westerosi history, necessarily. But you know, all a fascinating exercise and I think you’ve accurately identified.
A lot less of that would’ve had to go on with A Song of Ice and Fire. Just because those characters are so fully realized. And even people who are adults, you get windows into their childhood throughout the course of the thing, and you get a sense of who they are. So, yeah, the short, you know, the long answer I guess, is that Fire and Blood does offer a ton of opportunity for invention, both to the writers and to the actors inhabiting the characters.
Aziz: All right. We’ve got a couple of real quick questions to finish off. I know we’re about out of time here, so we’ll give you just some short ones to wrap it up.
Ryan: Go ahead.
Aziz: A question from a listener, Scott Wortman. Is there a favorite house of yours that you just weren’t able to include that you really wanted to?
Ashaya: Or do you just have that power? If you want something, you’ve got it.
Aziz: You’re just like, nah, we’re putting that in there. I know you said you could include in machine guns if you wanted to on what’s… The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of podcast, you made that point, so.
Ryan: That’s right.
Aziz: That is true, we don’t expect to see machine guns.
Ryan: The top panels of Viserys’ wheelhouse do pop off at some point.
Aziz: Cannons emerge.
Ryan: Machine guns come up, ala the Batmobile.
Aziz: That’s gonna be a surprise, that’s a real twist. Yeah.
Ryan: It’s it is, it is surprising.
Aziz: Wildfire cannons, yeah.
Ryan: That’s good too. I’ve really enjoyed introducing, I think the fun of this series is that you get to introduce the Hightowers and the Velaryons, and spent a lot of time with them. So I’ve really enjoyed that. I think, I think particularly the Velaryons have been really interesting cause that was such an interesting place to go. And that’s a house that exists in A Song of Ice and Fire, but is so kind of marginalized that you don’t even really hear about them anymore.
Um, so here exploring them at their height… the Hightowers are always important. It’s just, they’re way off in the south, and they didn’t have anybody at court, so you don’t really get a sense of them. I think they’re interesting because this is their World Series. I mean, this is the best, this is the best the franchise has ever been.
Aziz: Yes.
Ryan: The most powerful…
Aziz: The peak.
Ryan: And I think that’s a fascinating thing to explore cuz they, you know… In many ways you can say either one of those houses are sort of the Lannisters of this time in their reach and power and their access to the, you know, to the throne, into the King’s ear. In some cases, the King’s bed.
Aziz: True. True.
Ryan: And, uh, I think all that stuff is fascinating. I’m glad that, you know, I’m glad that Fire and Blood, as much as I love the Starks and the Lannisters, was not just another, you know, go at the Starks and the Lannisters. You know that they still inhabit the world, but we’re gonna focus over here and here now.
Yeah.
And I, and I, and I like that a lot.
Aziz: That was good, yeah, I agree, totally agree with that. From Stacy Meyer, was there any particular character that stood out as really hard to cast, one that through that process that proved particularly difficult, or maybe more than one?
Ryan: Hm. I mean, we had sort of an embarrassment of riches the whole way along, because it’s such a great acting pool out here. And also people really wanted to do this, to do the show and we were casting during COVID, so a lot of people were out of work.
Aziz: Ohhhh.
Ryan: Or at least paused on work. So a lot of people were just happy to, if not get out of their houses, at least get in front of a Zoom and do some acting. I think it was very challenging casting the multi-generational characters, the characters that we represent at different ages.
Because you have to find actors that reasonably have the same kind of facial structure as one another, so you believe that one grows into the other. But they also have to be great actors and you have to find two of them, so that, that was very challenging.
You know, young Rhaenyra and young Alicent were very challenging because the very first people we cast in the show were Paddy, Emma, and Olivia.
Aziz: Ohhhh.
Ryan: And so we had Emma and Olivia for months before we got to Emily Carey and Milly Alcock.
Aziz: Interesting.
Ryan: Uh, ALcock, sorry. I keep giving this like British accent to her name. It’s Alcock, sorry Milly. Introduced her on stage, pronounced her name wrong at the, uh, British premiere in front of 800 people. So anyway, it’s ALcock, it’s Alcock, um, but yeah, so you know, there, and that was really tricky, cuz those are two main characters. You need these really interesting, deeply compelling actors to inhabit not only the character, but also to fill Emma D’Arcy’s shoes and Olivia Cooke’s shoes, which is no small feat in itself. And, so that just took a little time.
Aziz: Right on. Well, that does make a lot of sense that the multi-generation ones… I’ve watched lots of shows that have had that challenge. What comes to mind is Rome, when they had to change the actor for Augustus and…
Ryan: Oh yeah.
Aziz: Yeah. He didn’t really look like the other one. I mean, they were both good actors, but that was an example of, wait, that’s Augustus?? Oh, anyway. But I don’t envy that, having to make that choice.
Ryan: Yeah, but all credit goes to Kate Rhode James, to our casting director. I need to call out Kate cuz she did all the finding. She just put great people in front of us and let us, you know, read them and and challenge them.
Aziz: Okay. Uh, okay, two quick ones here. Do you have a favorite Aegon of all time? That’s a question from listener Dom Tartaglia.
Ryan: I mean, Aegon II is not a good person, but he is, but he’s, he, he’s fascinating to write for.
Aziz: Interesting.
Ryan: Because there’s a deep pathos there and it’s like, it’s one of those characters who… it’s a great George, you know, character because he is gray and he does… In even the things that you don’t like in him, as you will see, there are reasons that a person becomes that way over time. Being raised in such an environment, being, you know, things happening around him, and there’s nature and nurture elements to it.
But he’s not a, he’s not a straight sort of Joffrey, you know, bad seed. I think Aegon could have, in a different environment, maybe broken a different way. And also Aegon is sort of the kind of guy where, you know, if he wasn’t vying for the throne, he’d probably be just kind of fine.
It’s the fact that the crown is within reach that makes him kind of more perilous and dangerous than he is, whereas Joffrey sort of, you know, you don’t even want that guy as a neighbor in your building.
Aziz: Yeah. Just true psycho.
Ryan: But I have to also pay service to Dunk and Egg and I love little Egg, Aegon. And that whole story and where that goes. And because of my relationship to George, I’ve been exposed to certain things about, you know, deeper details about that particular story. And, uh, and it’s just, it’s great. I mean, it’s… you know, it’s… spoiler for your podcast, George is a very good writer and, uh, has…
Aziz: What??? This is the first we’re hearing of this.
Ryan: I know, and has really great things in store there, and they’re wonderful. I’ve always loved that story cuz it’s just so tonally different than A Song of Ice and Fire, and also Fire and Blood. I just think it’s a great… even though they’re all happening in the same world, it’s three completely different meals for people.
And that one’s always been very kind of near and dear to my heart. Um, I think I read… Is it possible I read The Hedge Knight before I read Storm of Swords? I mean, I think that might have happened.
Aziz: Well, it did come out before Storm of Swords. I think it came out only like a few weeks after A Clash of Kings, if I remember my history correctly, but…
Ryan: Yeah, I became a fan just as Storm was being published. So I think I found The Hedge Knight while I was waiting to track down the hardcover for Storm. So I think I read that, and it just stuck with me cuz I was like, wow, this is really cool, so there’s a whole universe here.
Aziz: That’s amazing. That is also when I discovered the universe. I remember going to Barnes and Noble to read the Cersei chapter in the back of the paperback Storm of Swords, which was, that was the only way to get it without buying the book again, so yeah, those were the days.
Ryan: Those were the days when they had bookstores!
Aziz: Yes. Those were. Those, yeah, exactly. Now you, uh, you go find the synopsis online somewhere that someone else has posted, illegally.
Ryan: TikTok.
Aziz: Yes, TikTok, right. TikTok has replaced bookstores? That’s grim.
Ryan: And, and literacy. Don’t forget literacy.
Aziz: All right, last question. A lot of people wanna know about things about the sources, like the characters from Fire and Blood who provided the sources, whether we’ll get like a taste of… maybe not, taste isn’t the right word for Mushroom, or Septon Eustace or any of the others, Orwyle, or any of these other characters… are any of these gonna have like a nod?
Of course it would be maybe too much to expect them to be featured, I don’t know if anyone’s expecting that.
Ryan: Yeah.
Aziz: But will we maybe get hints of that? Is there some nod to that being thrown in, maybe? Something to look forward to, maybe?
Ryan: I will say, no one wants to taste Mushroom, just to start.
Aziz: Yeah, that was poorly worded on my part.
Ryan: Yes. That’s, that’s a, that’s a biohazard if I’ve heard one.
Aziz: That’s a bad trip, that’s the wrong kind of Mushroom.
Ryan: Even, yes, even if a third of those stories are true. Nobody wants, you should, you should definitely wash your hands after meeting Mushroom. But, uh, yes, there is service paid to those things. Some more than others, some not at all.
Aziz: Okay.
Ryan: Is that a vague enough, tantalizing enough answer?
Aziz: I mean, we can’t expect too much there, but, uh, you know.
Ashaya: We had to ask, it’s a burning question in the fandom.
Aziz: A lot of people wanted to know and we, you know, we told them we wouldn’t probably get a completely straight answer, but, you know, be worth asking, so we appreciate that. Yeah. So this has been great. We really appreciate your time. These were some really good answers.
Ryan: Of course.
Aziz: It’s great nerding out with you on this. We’re all just fans of this material. You obviously have a big high seat here and we’re really happy with what’s been coming from you and your team.
Ryan: Great. Well, great. I mean, that means, that means a whole lot. I mean, this is… you know, this audience is where I started, and it’s definitely who I had in mind when sitting down with the show, um, and I wanna, you know, I wanna do right by you guys. So that’s all great to hear.
Aziz: Awesome. Well, we’ll call it an interview here, a great conversation has been had. We’ll be putting this out soon. And happy future endeavors here. We’re looking forward to everything else. There’s eight more episodes this season. We don’t need to remind our listeners to watch the next episode. That’s the most obvious thing ever…
Ashaya: But we can remind y’all to check out Ryan’s podcast.
Aziz: Check out Stuff Dreams Are Made Of for sure, subscribe, listen, and maybe start, if y’all want, start with that George RR Martin episode, y’all have an interview with him. That’s a great place to start. But the rest of the catalog is excellent too. Alright everyone, thanks for watching. Ryan, thanks again. And we’ll see you all next time. Valar Rereadis.
[…] podcast, The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of, here. You can find our previous interview with Ryan here, and our interview with George R.R. Martin […]