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♪ (INTENSE MUSIC PLAYS) ♪

It is very impressive. The detail was amazing.

It was just like hours and hours of nerding out.

The prosthetic is gorgeous, but awful.

If you get this wrong, the whole thing's really done for.

I'd have had his head as well.

We all had chills.

This is gonna be pretty epic.

It really takes on a life of its own.

We wanted Daemon to have a hobby on Dragonstone,

where he was collecting dragon's eggs

for this incubator he's building

for what he sees as the coming conflict.

Dragonmont is the volcanic mountain

on the island of Dragonstone.

And it's where the dragon's eggs are incubated.

The challenge there was to keep it mysterious enough.

It's just meant to hint at the larger mythology

around where dragons lay their eggs.

Jim basically took an old set of a tunnel

and started working with Angus and Visual Effects.

And that's all a very small set that was brought to life

to look much more epic than it was.

It's quite a small set, but it's very tall,

and it's outside.

And it's got to have action on it all the way up,

so it's quite a dramatic cliff.

And I have climbed up it. It's great fun to climb up it.

We didn't want to copy the Game of Thrones dragon egg.

But we came up with a new version,

which is a lot sharper, slightly bigger,

and very vibrant colors.

We've made about 20 of them in the end,

and each one was slightly different.

Some of them are quite lightweight.

But some of them, especially in the egg kiln,

they have to be on fire.

So we had to make them out of solid plaster.

The idea was that they incubate

in warm, hot, volcanic mountains.

So Props and Special Effects worked on this goo

that the eggs are incubating in.

Really, most of our work is augmenting the fact

that this is a hot, steamy environment,

and making the crevice that we shot in bigger.

We're adding a lot of steam,

a lot of dust, and just trying to make it feel hot and muggy.

When Katie and I talked about it,

we first looked at Alien because we both are fans.

But we wanted to find something of our own.

It's gonna be very Alien-like, where...

It'll make that noise as it pops out to reveal itself.

Miguel and Ryan wanted it to look like it was spewed out from the dragon.

They wanted it to be very organic looking and very messy.

We worked a lot with the Props Building Team.

And we came up with this idea of an egg sack that would harden on the outside.

And when you break it open, steam comes out,

and the eggs are covered in goo.

They went through so many tests of that thing.

It was a real delight to see it get made, and then put into action.

When we looked at the final prototype,

we opened it, and the steam came out, and the goo was all perfect.

And I sent it to Miguel and Ryan, and we were all just like,

"Whoa, this is it! This is how eggs come to be."

When Rhaenyra and Daemon return to King's Landing for the first time,

there were no words that were gonna describe the difference.

But we needed to feel the difference.

Geeta and Katie did a really fantastic job

of showing a much more sparse, austere King's Landing and Red Keep.

Based on the note that, "As the years have gone by, Alicent has found religion."

I would say, "It's nice to be home," but I scarcely recognize it.

Episode eight is six years later than the previous episode.

We wanted to see it through Rhaenyra's point of view

for the first time coming back.

And so, we start with the Steadicam shot that leads her into the space.

And then you open up to reveal how empty it feels now,

how much colder and darker than when we last saw it.

Speaking with Ryan, Miguel, and Geeta, we wanted to pare it down.

This was going to have the influence of Alicent

when she's in her ascendency.

And it was a sense of her stripping back the decadence

and taking on the influence of the Grand Sept.

And we've introduced these huge, stone, carved,

seven-pointed star elements,

which hang in the grand staircase.

Rhaenyra sees a giant, seven-pointed star in the main hallway.

Gaudy, if you ask me.

Beyond episode eight, we're into a more austere, religious Red Keep.

Um, the fun and games has gone out of the castle life.

So, for us, it was really a case of just stripping back.

So we took all the artwork out, we put in religious symbols,

and made it a lot harder place to be.

Toning everything down a bit from those early episodes

where it's looking really flamboyant.

And really, those rich times of, like, "This is the Targaryens."

Now, to the slightly colder feeling

now Alicent's taken over the place.

It was just getting that feeling across

and making it look more simple.

I actually like the look, you know, the new rooms.

I kind of like that they're a little bit sparser,

and it's gone a bit religious,

more so due to Alicent's influence.

It feels like a house where somebody is dying,

in which case is very true.

But Alicent's converted it into a place of piety and religion.

It has a feeling of kind of piousness about it,

and a sort of erasure of Targaryen history.

The Valyrian model, that was interesting

because we've done architectural models in the past.

Never at this scale. I mean, this model is huge.

Eight meters long. That's a massive model to make.

I think we could've gone a bit bigger, to be honest.

What happens is if you're a showrunner on a show, you say,

"Wouldn't it be interesting if there was a model of Valyria."

And then you show up on set,

and it's a city in its own right.

Viserys is not into dragon riding.

He takes up a more intellectual pursuit.

The idea is that he's gone back to all the old texts and maps

and has painstakingly recreated it.

It is truly wonderous what you've built.

It's sort of like Viserys' train set.

It's his little hobby that he has, that he escapes to.

The King's model of Old Valyria was a huge exercise, in itself.

It starts small,

and it gradually gets bigger and bigger,

and takes over the apartment.

We were trying to decide what he would have made it out of.

So, what are his tools, what is he making it with, and what scale is it?

Because ancient Valyria is a dragon town,

so everything is big.

And I brought a pumice stone from my bathroom.

That was my reference!

And just the pigmentation in that,

and the darkness, the different texture,

and depth you could get from that.

So then, we latched onto pumice stone,

which is a much softer, more volcanic stone.

And it ties into Dragonstone and Dragonmont

and the volcanic nature of that island.

I only pour over the histories and provide the plans.

The stone masons built the structures.

The whole thing was drawn up by our concept artist,

and put into workable files,

so that they could just print out the blocks.

And then, some of it, they sculpted freehand as well.

So, it was a mixture.

It had to look handmade.

But obviously, we couldn't make an eight-meter model out of pumice.

So we had to come up with a technique

of making it quickly, but also give the finish of pumice.

The 3D printers were our little soldiers in the background,

working for about two months, 24-7,

printing out hundreds of buildings.

A lot of the buildings were so large,

they had to be made in small components,

so we had to glue 'em back together again.

All the main buildings, they're sort of 3D printed.

Take about 24, 48 hours for that one building to be done.

We've done it all in PLA plastic on these machines.

So the beauty is with a machine, you do get a hard edge finish.

But then, we can go over it with textures and finishes

and paint effect to make it look like pumice stone.

The 3D print's got about three or four layers of plaster over it.

So we had to soften up the edges, window frames,

all that sort of stuff, just so it looks more hand-carved.

It just grows and grows and grows.

It gets bigger in each episode.

There's over 200 pieces.

I think I'm the only one who knows where they go, so...

It was made in five stages. Each stage had A, B, C, D and E.

And then, we made it so it's joined together without any seamline.

It was an amazing piece that became five separate units

that we could put together, but also take apart.

It was always in about six or eight pieces.

But then, schedules change, and that piece is in, that one's out.

It's all gotta be mobile,

but all go together and look like one piece as well.

As the King is getting older, he can't spend as much time,

but he wants to finish it, so it becomes a bit more blocky.

Right near the end of the season, he hasn't touched it.

So, it's got cobwebs on it that are quite heavy over here,

just to give it a bit of age to it.

It's only when we finally got it all on set and all dressed in

that you really stand back and see the work we've done.

And that's very, very rewarding.

It's an integral part of our story, which is,

although Viserys is very much a progressive Targaryen,

he yearns for the Valyria of old.

Looking, in some way, to understand something that he can never quite grasp.

Nearly 20 years ago in this very--

One of my favorite scenes we did was

when Paddy did the long walk to his throne.

It's quite an empty set, but it really works.

Paddy's entrance in that scene is really huge.

Nobody's expecting the King to come,

and then he arrives,

and he's this little person who can barely walk to the throne.

So, it was really exciting shooting that entrance.

What was so shocking was that he had lost so much weight.

And we wanted it to feel emotional and real.

It was about a man, a father. It wasn't about this ghoul.

For Paddy, just the physical way that he performed the role, I really commend him.

It was a real undertaking as an artist.

She's fabulous.

She's serving Targaryen realness.

One of the first things I talked to Miguel and Ryan about

was the King's cane.

This is a dragon, which is 3D printed.

We know that the King has a reverence for dragons,

respects them, but does not want to wield their power himself.

So he holds it backwards,

because this is a family heirloom

that he has started to use as he ages.

First he gets the cane, then he gets the mask.

And the two together are sort of symbols of opulence

that he pulls towards himself to not lose his power.

I must admit my confusion.

I do not understand

why petitions are being heard over a settled succession.

The King's mask, which I've been working on with Geeta very closely,

it's 3D printed and then plated.

The mask covers half his face,

as closely to the look that he had when he was strong.

We had to get the King's head as a 3D image,

and we created a mask that had to hide his disease.

And we had to make it match

his crown as well, that he was wearing.

It had to have that sort of brassy, gold look to it,

so we ended up plating it in brass,

and it's got that expensive look to it.

Many fittings we had for that mask,

but it was worth it. I quite like it.

There's a sort of Phantom of the Opera element to it.

It's a great visual.

And hopefully, the reveal will be shocking for people.

The gold mask took many, many months of development.

The mask, in the end, represents the teamwork that we all had in making it.

The combination of various prosthetic makeup,

the VFX that Angus and his team are planning to do,

Paddy's performance, and then this gold mask,

I think, makes it such an iconic character.

Allow it.

Do not forget yourself, Vaemond.

Vaemond's petition of the King in the episode is a bit of a kangaroo court.

But when Viserys shows up and says, "I'll sit the throne today,"

you know that things are turning around in Rhaenyra's direction.

Her children are bastards!

EMMA D'ARCY: Wil, who plays Vaemond, very beautiful in that scene.

It's exciting when characters who bite their tongue

finally just say what has been eating them.

Daemon wants to cause chaos

because he can and that's his attitude to things.

He's got a very, quite clear moral compass.

And you're either in it, or you're out of it.

Daemon never forgets a slight,

and I think he's been waiting years to take it out.

I love that moment where Daemon just melts out of the background

and Vaemond's head disappears.

He can keep his tongue.

He lops his head off. That was pretty shocking.

In the end, Wil did just about everything for that stunt.

And Ryan and Miguel wanted Vaemond to be completely taken by surprise.

And so, those are things that drove how we shot that scene.

It was a really fun scene to shoot.

And the beheading is a great collaboration between

VFX, Prosthetics, Special Effects, and Stunts.

We're just tryin' to give him a sort of signature kind of...

Something dynamic.

And it comes out of nowhere.

We'll put Wil there and get him to do his fall,

and he'll drop down to his knees.

And then, we'll put a C-stand there with a tennis ball on it,

for Matt to come up and...

...just miss.

And then, we'll comp the two together,

so it will look like he's cutting his head in half.

Daemon slices through his head just above his jaw,

and we have a practical body dropped into frame in camera,

and the top section of the head, which lies to the side of it.

We had a generic body mold, which is the same size as Wil.

And we got a side scan of Wil in the desired expression.

And we got a print of the head, created a plasticine head,

cut it in half, and we sculpted all the mouth interior,

to the bottom of the top of the head, had to sculpt a separate tongue.

I had to go into this booth,

which has, like, about 300 cameras.

And then, I had to stand in different poses,

so that they can do all the...

And then, at the end of this, "Could you do some dead faces?"

I'm like... "What's a dead face?"

"Like-- Like you sort of-- Like that."

And I just-- I just kept cracking up.

I couldn't stop laughing.

Okay, and that was lovely. I'm still running.

The decapitation itself is VFX-heavy.

There are various clean plates that Angus and his team will be shooting with Wil in camera.

So, we're creating the post effect, basically,

of the body dead on the floor.

The prosthetic that we have for it is awful.

Gorgeous, but awful.

Which includes his tongue and his entire bottom jaw.

So, we're just making that slightly more gruesome.

It's already incredibly gruesome.

The work was unbelievable.

If you look at the scene,

you think it's Wil, and it's not.

The dummy was the most life-like thing I've ever seen.

Like, the teeth and tongue...

All you wanted to do was just, like...

But there was someone stood guarding it from us wanting to play with it.

When I first saw... me...

it was just so bizarre, and so surreal.

'Cause it's like, "How many times do you actually get to be involved in one's own death?"

I think it's one of the great Game of Thrones beheadings,

and a pleasure to be a part of it.

- Disarm him! - No need.

When I first spoke with Miguel and Ryan about the banquet scene in 108,

they talked about The Last Supper,

and how they got so much inspiration from it.

So, Katie and I designed the table to be set up like The Last Supper.

Final tribute.

It created a lot of challenges, because we had visual effects around Viserys,

but it also brought a specific character to that scene.

D'ARCY: The changes that happen over the course of that episode,

happen around the pivot of Viserys.

The idea being that, Viserys' physical condition is marching in parallel

with the condition of his family and his reign.

So, as one degrades, so does the other.

How good it is to see you all tonight.

The banquet scene breaks down into sections.

We are shooting around the table.

There's a dance sequence and a fight sequence.

Jace! That's enough!

We've had three or four days to shoot that scene.

There's a lot of cast in there.

And we've got four cameras in there.

It is a challenging scene because all the characters are there,

and they all, sort of, have to have their moment.

But Geeta and myself try to focus the scene on the hero triangle of characters,

Alicent, Viserys, and Rhaenyra,

and how they are trying to resolve

all the conflict that they've had up until this episode.

A toast to our princess.

Eight actually is one of my favorite episodes.

It's The Last Supper. It's really Viserys' last stand.

It's the father and daughter story

finding some resolution and closure.

And unexpectedly, there's a brief moment of,

"Oh, maybe things are going to be okay."

My own face is no longer a handsome one...

if, indeed, it ever was.

I thought it would be interesting that anybody who's cut by the throne,

gets this disease.

It's a kind of leprosy, and it would be interesting

to see Viserys, over time, slowly deteriorate and decay.

Viserys, I found, to be a very tragic figure in this state.

Paddy really brought some real pathos to his portrayal.

It was six years after the last episode.

And Viserys, his health has deteriorated significantly.

Miguel and Ryan were looking to settle quite a passage of time

between episode seven and eight.

So, Viserys' change is quite extreme.

Father?

Who goes there?

From episode one to his demise in episode eight,

there's probably about six or seven different looks,

which progress from something very subtle

to something quite extensive in the end.

From subtle nuances to his wigs, his hairline,

the actual thickness of his hair,

to the pallor of his skin, his skin tone,

ulcers, and things on his body.

We started with younger Viserys, had the fuller hair.

And as he deteriorates,

that's when his hair got thinner and starts to recede slightly.

And we start using different wigs.

Then when we get to ep eight, it is punctured hair in a bald cap,

which Barrie and his team made and punched the hair in.

Once it's all on Paddy,

then I would slice all the hair up

and make sure we're matching it to some sort of a length that it would have been.

He would have, sort of, tried to hold on to the little bit he had

and make it look like, "Oh, bless him.

He's lost his hair, but he's holding on."

Slowly, over a period of time, you can see his sore is festering underneath the skin,

so that then, we're not just jumping into

a great big ulcer that will appear.

There's a progression.

We just bring that, sort of, little, extra bit of something to it,

like a bit of sweat,

or starting to make his hair greasy.

Little things. And it brings it to life.

♪ Close your eyes And give me your hand ♪

It's approximately a four-hour process that we do with Paddy,

with his head and shoulders make-up.

Some of it is painted in afterwards,

so not even I know what it's gonna look like in the end.

His dream.

The Song of Ice and Fire...

We also have some augmentation from VFX as well, with, sort of,

cavities and various anatomy on his face to help us along

to do things we can't do practically.

We're creating what's called a lighting stand-in of Viserys' head.

And it's to help VFX and their department

with the anatomy and the internal cavities of Viserys' face.

And we would shoot with Paddy.

He would have the prosthetics on.

And you'd see we had patches of green on his face

where we needed to replace things.

And then bring out this head.

You could bring those in,

in the lighting of the environment that you were shooting in

and see what the reflections on the skin looks like,

and what the textures all look like under the lighting on that day,

which gives you the perfect thing to match to in CG.

We had to get a double in

to be the very thin version of Viserys.

My plan, originally, was that I'm gonna go and lose a lot of weight.

But we jump around so much on this show that I just thought,

"Stay as you are, you know. We'll work it out another way."

We also have a double, Nick,

who we shoot on his body as well.

He's got a much skinnier, tighter frame,

and he's got an incredible rib cage

that we shade into with air brushes.

So, we shot those scenes, both with Paddy in make up and with a body double.

We have to combine Paddy's performance

with the body-double's body, which varies.

Sometimes it's very easy 'cause he's lying on the table.

Sometimes, he's actually doing physical action. He's getting up.

We've got to synchronize those two shots together.

Milk of the poppy.

He's in so much pain, that he's on the old milk of the poppy.

I don't know why I find that so funny.

They're always on the old milk of the poppy.

Katie and Geeta had an idea on the King's death, to put him on quite a wide lens.

And in order to do that, we had to get our technocrane up to that height.

So there was this enormous scaffolding rig built here on the ground floor.

We got the technocrane up to the first floor level.

And yeah, it worked really, really well.

I walked into the outer courtyard on many occasion,

and would look up and think, "What the fuck are they doing?"

And then, all was revealed on that particular day.

And actually, it was genuinely touching.

When we see Viserys for the first time in this episode, he's surrounded by family.

As we ended the episode,

it's significant in that moment that Viserys is dying,

knowing that all seven episodes before this were the struggle between power and family,

here he is, dying alone.