Spoilers follow for “The Lord of the Tides,” the eighth episode of House of the Dragon.
And now his reign has ended. House of the Dragon actor Paddy Considine said good-bye to King Viserys I in eighth episode “The Lord of the Tides,” which begins with a six-year time jump and ends with Rhaenyra’s (Emma D’Arcy) father and Alicent’s (Olivia Cooke) husband finally succumbing to the disease that’s been slowly killing him over the course of the season.
In the nearly two decades of story time that have passed since premiere episode “The Heirs of the Dragon,” Viserys has watched his family bicker, backstab, and divide into “green” and “black” factions who disagree over who gets to next claim the Iron Throne — a desire that Considine says he used as a perpetual source of confusion for his character: “I think part of him is looking at all these people and going, Why are you fighting over this seat? This is a cursed item. This will possess you. This is something that you don’t need in your life.”
With Viserys’s passing and the “song of ice and fire” prophecy that he was carrying now shared with both his daughter and his wife, the tensions between Rhaenyra, Alicent, and those loyal to their respective claims to succession move one step closer to exploding into all-out war. But the narrative drama provided by the king’s death is also a loss for the ensemble, which was grounded by Considine’s steady, humanistic performance of a king increasingly weakened by both his deteriorating body and his awareness that the legacy he leaves behind isn’t the one he wanted.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Over and over, Viserys is just begging his family to get along. He does it at the hunt, he does it when all the kids are fighting in “Driftmark,” and he does it again in this latest episode during the family dinner. Were you playing those scenes like Viserys really believes reconciliation can happen, or like he knows it’s a lost cause?
A bit of a lost cause, if I’m honest. It’s just wishful thinking, isn’t it, that they could get on? When we were younger, me and Daemon got on. There was no falling-out before I became king. What is the big problem? But I think he’s a rarity in that world, of somebody that has a lot of compassion and a lot of love and actually cares. I think that care is part of his undoing, really. He cares too much. He feels too much. Ultimately, that kind of destroys him, destroys his soul — and eventually kills him.
On the one hand, you have the greens and blacks saying to each other, “War is coming.” But on the other hand, it seems like the common people love the king. There’s all this widespread public support of King Viserys, but his family are just jerks.
It feels like that, doesn’t it? He’s doing everything and they’re just undoing it. I think part of him — and part of me as an actor, what I brought to him — was looking at all these people and going, Why are you fighting over this seat? This is a cursed item. This will possess you. This is something that you don’t need in your life. I love that about him, that he’s not corrupted by power. That was not his mission. He inherited this throne through another peaceful king, Jaehaerys. Being the kind of person that he is, he just wanted to keep that going and uphold those virtues. We don’t need to be at war all the time. I’ve said before: People perceived him as being weak for not being at war, but he actually perceived his dragons as being like nuclear weapons. He even says in the first episode, These things are an abomination, and we should never have made them. They give us our power, and without them, we would be nothing. We have to use these nukes responsibly.
People think he’s weak for not getting involved in an illegal war that his brother goes and fights, but if that was real life, he’d be perceived so differently. If that was in the real world — look at Bush and Blair, look at the shit, the absolute clusterfuck that all that was. We are talking about fantasy, I suppose. But that world is condemned for somebody that wants peace and is perceived as weak.
I’m curious how you worked with the time jumps in the material. Were they helpful in letting you dig into how much Viserys changes, both physically and emotionally, or were they a challenge?
I have to be honest with you, I didn’t think about what he was doing in those years between. We had enough on our plates to think about dealing with what was actually real, day-to-day. [Laughs.] They were an interesting thing to have to deal with because you could be shooting, say, episode two one day, and episode six the next. You could be doing sometimes two episodes in one day. You have a different set of kids in the afternoon to the ones you had in the morning — that wasn’t exactly it, I’m kind of messing around a bit, but that was sort of how it was. The hardest thing was mapping all that out. We had to really think about how we mapped his decline from the beginning to the end.
The time jumps, as far as drama, I never found them to be particularly problematic. I think what was going on in those intervening years would have been probably quite boring. As far as my character is concerned, I think I got to have a really great arc and tell a really great story with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and you can’t really ask for anything more than that if you’re just in it for one season. I thought they were necessary, and I thought they told the story really well. Some people struggled with them; I didn’t. Struggling with everyone’s name, and [points], “Are you my kid?” [Laughs.] That was about it, really. That was the main thing — mapping the journey. And of course, I have that physical decline going on through it.
That long walk Viserys makes in the throne room, when he comes to defend Rhaenyra and remind everyone who the king really is — it’s a bit of really committed acting. I did get a little emotional when Daemon picks up the crown and hands it to you. What kind of headspace were you in for that scene, and what did that demand of you physically?
A lot. I put my hip out doing it, and it’s only just felt like everything’s settled now, months after it.
I always had this idea in my head of, this is the last day of this man’s life, and he knows it. He senses it. So he makes this massive, slow, painful walk as a kind of act of defiance, really, an act of strength. I had to do the walk up and down that throne room, which was really long. I can’t remember how many times I had to do it, but I damaged my hip doing it. I must have broke about three or four walking sticks. It was a really physical few days’ work, that was. And the idea behind it is, when he gets to the bottom of those steps, he looks up, and in his mind he’s going, This is the last time I will ever ascend these steps and sit on that throne. This is absolutely it.
The moment with the crown was an accident. It just fell off my head and crashed on the floor. Matt [Smith] picks it up, walks me to the throne, and I sit down and slump in the throne, and then he takes the crown and places it on my head. That’s where we were at by that point, as actors together, as brothers. That’s the investment that we had in it at that point. It was a beautiful moment, but afterward we went to Geeta [Vasant Patel, the episode’s director] and said, “Look, that’s gotta stay. That has to be a part of the scene. It’s too good a moment, and it says everything without words.” These brothers, the back-and-forth they’ve had over the years, all the turmoil and the threats and the heartache and all that — this moment says everything. And it came out of an accident. And Geeta was great because she had the kind of experience and the artistry to see the moment and let us keep it. We re-created it every time and made sure that that moment stayed in. When you get actors like me and Matt, and you don’t squeeze them and you allow for things to happen, you get those moments. That’s the bonus. That’s why you hired us, isn’t it? On some sets, that would be shot down, and that’s sad because I love the accidents, even when I’m directing myself. Those little accidents are where the gold is.
Were there any other accidents?
There were little instinctive things, improvisational moments that made it into the final cut. The moment at the end — in my mind, I’ve made a choice that as he dies, he sees Aemma. When he reaches out and says, “My love,” that’s what he sees the moment he dies. I tried to discuss it with Geeta, and I’m like, Hang on. This is Paddy stuff, not character stuff, and I’m just going to keep this thing secret. And if they use it, they use it, and if they don’t, they don’t. Luckily, they used it, which is amazing.
Ultimately, the character is a very, very tragic character. I think some people are confused. I think they thought he chose to save his son over his wife, and he didn’t. They were both going to die. He just chose to put his wife through a terrible procedure, and that breaks his heart and he never recovers from it. I always saw him as this tragic character that lost the love of his life, and the minute that he burned her on her funeral pyre, he just never lived properly again. I think he started dying from that moment. When the illness strickens him and he gets worse — if you notice through the story, he’s not the one asking for a cure. He’s not the one saying to the maesters, “Well, find a way to help me, I’m losing my arm, what’s going on?” He just accepts this thing for what it is. I think in some way — and this is probably a Paddy choice, a deep-seated Catholic-guilt Paddy choice — he’s being punished.
He feels on a certain level he deserves it.
Yeah, he deserves it. I imagine he’s in such pain at that point. That was another thing too: him walking into the throne room. I remember I spoke to Ryan [Condal, co-creator] about the meal — the “last supper,” we called it — and I remember saying to him, “Look, man, he can’t walk into that room. He’s just had an entrance. He can’t walk anymore. That’s the last time this man will walk, and this is the last time this man will stand.” They got this seat and they carried him in on this seat and placed him at the table.
Between the chair, the golden half-mask you’re wearing and then take off, and the Valyrian steel dagger, there are a lot of props for this character. Were there any that you found really helpful, or that were challenging to work with?
As an actor, in the past I think I’ve actually been quite afraid of props. Having the mask — that idea actually came later, I didn’t know that was going to happen. I guess it was Geeta and Miguel [Sapochnik, season-one co-showrunner] who came up with this idea of him wearing a mask, so we were fitting to get the best-fit mask. One day, it was literally glued to my face and I couldn’t get it off. [Laughs.] It kept slipping. It was a pain in the ass, but I loved it. To me, it was Lon Chaney. It was my chance to be the Phantom of the Opera.
That scene was also good-bye: Good-bye, and look at me, I look horrific. But look at me like I’m a father, like I’m a brother, like I’m a husband. Nobody ever looked at me like Viserys, I was always the king. And that takes its toll, too. You feel it as an actor when you start to disappear a little bit as well, and you go, “Where’s Paddy? I’m losing something here. Can I just meet somebody?” When someone says to me, “Oh, I don’t watch you,” I go, “Oh, good, thank you, great. That’s great. [Laughs.] We can have a conversation about something else.” But I loved the mask, I loved that reveal.
The knife was the one for me. I loved the knife, and I loved the significance of it. When I got it, and I realized that it was the knife that later killed the Night King, I was like, Whoa. That’s amazing. What a great thing to have. Such a significant item within that world. I never ask to keep props — the only thing I’ve got of Viserys is a scabby old headpiece and wig that my makeup team gave me as a joke at the end. It’s in my garage and people see it and say, “What’s that?” That’s the only thing I have. But the knife, I wanted. I asked several people, I said, “Could I have a knife? If you make me one, I’ll buy it.” And they were like, “No, no, that’s a really important knife.” And I go, “Yeah, I know. That’s why I wanted it.” I think he’s the best character I’ve ever played, and I just wanted something of him.
[Brings a miniature dragon into the video frame.] That’s all I stole. A stone dragon from my Old Valyria model, and a coin with my head on it, and that’s it.
Between that and the wig, you’ve really got the character covered.
Bring on Halloween!
The dagger is central to the “song of ice and fire” prophecy, which has plagued Viserys. There’s a lot of talk on this show of legacy. What does Viserys see as his legacy, and does he think he’s fulfilled it?
No, I don’t. I think he dies a failure in his own eyes. He has a moment with Lyonel Strong where he actually says, “How will I be remembered?” They don’t remember people like me. They don’t make songs about kings like me. They make songs about tyrants and great battles and horrific events. They don’t talk about people like me. I’m lost in the histories. I think that’s how Viserys feels, and I think that’s sort of how I played him as well, and I think that’s how I feel about him, because he’ll be forgotten, too. We’re in a culture now where things move so quickly. This week, it’s all about Viserys’s death, and it’s like, well, next week, it won’t be, and the week after it won’t. Season two will come around, and he’ll be forgotten like everybody else, because that’s what happens. In the end, he knew his fate.
