It’s time to head back to the Seven Kingdoms. One year after green-lighting the
Game of Thrones prequel
House of the Dragon, HBO has now announced the series’ lead. British actor Paddy Considine will take on the role of King Viserys Targaryen, a distant relative of Daenerys Targaryen, the Mother of Dragons. And yes, the new series will have dragons. Dracarys!Considine is a BAFTA-winning actor who has starred in several feature films in his native UK. The English actor has also been making a splash on this side of the pond in this year’s adaptation of Stephen King’s
The Outsider. The HBO crime drama premiered in January, and starred Considine alongside Ben Mendelsohn, Cynthia Erivo, Bill Camp, Julianne Nicholson, and Jason Bateman. Considine is also coming to HBO once again this month in the miniseries
The Third Day, which had its premiere at TIFF last month. Starring Jude Law, Katherine Waterston and Naomie Harris, the show is divided into three parts and follows Law and Harris as they arrive at different times on a mysterious island (Considine appears in the first and third parts of the miniseries).[video_embed id='-1']RELATED: You need to hear this guy’s incredible 'Game of Thrones' impressions[/video_embed]In addition to acting in films and TV shows, Considine took home a BAFTA in 2012 for writing and directing the British drama
Tyrannosaur. He also took home a Tony Award in 2019 for his performance in
The Ferryman. Considine is currently the only actor attached to
House of the Dragon.The series, which is set 300 years before the events in
Game of Thrones, will be co-created by author George R.R. Martin and Ryan Condal. Miguel Sapochnik, who directed six GoT episodes, including Battle of the Bastards, will act as the showrunner along with Condal.
Sara Lee Hess, who previously wrote for
Orange Is The New Black and was one of the writers on the
now-canceled Naomi Watts GoT prequel, will also write for
House of the Dragon.HBO made Considine’s casting announcement on October 5 and
described Viserys as a man who “…was chosen by the lords of Westeros to succeed the Old King, Jaehaerys Targaryen, at the Great Council at Harrenhal. A warm, kind, and decent man, Viserys only wishes to carry forward his grandfather’s legacy, but as we’ve learned from Game of Thrones, good men do not necessarily make for great kings.”Of course, that’s a very brief synopsis of Viserys’ life. Anyone who has read George R. R. Martin’s 2018 novel
Fire and Blood (here’s the
TL;DR version) knows that the King of the Seven Kingdoms’ ascension to the Iron Throne was much more complicated. The book centered on the House of Targaryen and told the story of Viserys' life, which included battling heirs, wars, dragons, and being surrounded by a ton of incest (would you expect anything less from a GoT prequel?). Though he was a kind king, Viserys’ reign, and more specifically, his death, led to a long and bloody battle for his spot on the Iron Throne, which culminated in the
Dance of the Dragons. This war eventually changed the rules of succession, which stated that women would come after men in the Targaryen family.
House of the Dragon is currently only scheduled to be 10 episodes long, but Martin’s
Fire and Blood has a plot with more than enough content for multiple seasons.[video_embed id='2030335']Before you go: Cat attempts daily hilarious attack on mail carrier[/video_embed]
