The House That Dragons Built

Okay. Everybody ready?

Here we go, standby!

At the end of the battle,

one by one, we stand up, we take in the living and the dead,

and we come back to life.

Ambush!

I feel good about the dagger, man. I think it's fuckin' awesome.

He's fucking walking over with a dagger in his hand?

I feel like that's so powerful.

Ryan had called me beforehand.

And I knew it was coming. Obviously, I always knew

that Cole was gonna go in Season Three.

And he says, "Cole's gonna die."

And all I asked, "Is it faithful to the books?"

'Cause I love how Cole dies in the books.

One of me against the two of you.

"Will that be enough to make a fight of it?"

And he offers to spare his men their lives.

That's all that I cared about. That he died how he died in the books.

And he did. So, I was very happy.

All of you are asking yourself,

"Who did this?" "What happened here?"

That's where you are mentally at the top of this.

It is a dead town.

This opening scene was a bit of a horror movie.

It's the tension of what they don't see

as opposed to what they're looking for.

It starts with Cole and his men making his way through a forest.

We shot that at sundown, so we had low sun.

We had lots of atmos, lots of smoke there.

It looks, I think, pretty spectacular.

And then the big ambush scene, we had to build the tension.

So, we had to keep the camera moving all the time.

So, there was Steadicam work, Ronin 4D work,

where we just try to live in the character's perspective

a lot, so that we're with Cole

and we're with Cole's perspective as he wanders into the camp.

Something doesn't feel quite right, and, of course, that's then paid off

when dead people jump to life and engage in battle.

They've been laid.

On your guard!

Cole's last stand was my favorite scene to shoot this season.

An incredibly choreographed scene because it's so complicated.

In that fight, albeit Cole is an amazing fighter,

I wanted it to feel sluggish and thuggish

and not look like perfect choreographed moves,

because the reality of fighting in that heat

after the months they've been traveling

and all the terrain they've had to cover and the weather they've been faced with,

that he finally gets into the fight

and he's just exhausted.

And hopefully, when people see the scene, they'll feel that.

Can I make a suggestion?

-Yes. -So, slice my leg.

-From high slap. -Yeah.

I go to stab him again.

-Yeah. -Bang!

And then he butts me to the head.

-Yeah, -Yeah, yeah.

Boom! And then that gets me to the ground.

-To get the mace. -Great. Perfect. Perfect.

We're using Cole's morningstar, which is his signature weapon,

which is one of the most difficult

pieces of equipment to use in a fight.

And we actually got Tim Lewis, the armorer,

to make us a real one. Real weight.

For us, those sort of chained weapons are always a challenge.

It took a long time to achieve from doing the chain

so it doesn't snap,

to having the ball on the end

that's soft enough to hit somebody, but then can contain that wax blood.

Two hemispheres of wax.

So they look like this.

And what we've got to do is just melt them together

to create a sphere, which we can fill with blood

and hit stunt men in the face with.

You can't imagine how heavy a morningstar is.

But if you think about like holding a giant stone

or an eight-kg kettlebell, it's wielding a weapon like that.

And of course, you can't use a real morningstar

'cause you'd kill your stunt person.

So you have to use something that weighs nothing,

but you have to sell that with acting.

So, Fabien spent hours and hours and hours perfecting a concept of motion

to create a sense of weight.

We also cycled through weapons with him, so we gave him a proper good end fight.

He starts with the morningstar.

He loses that in the face of somebody.

He then picks up a sword.

He loses that in somebody, draws his dagger out.

I worked with Joe and Paul.

Joe was my stunt double.

Such an incredible stuntman.

The way he takes punches, Joe, is unbelievable.

Stunt men and women in general don't get enough credit.

I really hope this doesn't sound effusive.

They are literally laying their lives on the line

so that things can look cool on film.

You know, they love it

and they're fearless

and they're such positive people to have around.

They are the best stunt team.

I can't speak enough about them.

They deserve so much credit.

It's an awfully messy job, murder, isn't it?

It's a lot to take in.

Obviously, you know it's prosthetics and you know it's fake,

but it's seriously realistic.

And so, it's a bit off-putting arriving onto set,

and seeing 30 dead bodies.

But you know what, it's Game of Thrones, what can I say?

Tommy Flanagan obviously is an iconic man.

And Tommy arrives in his big black sunglasses,

most rock-and-roll guy ever.

He said, "I'm here to kill you." I was like, "Fuckin'-A, Tommy Flanagan.

I'll get killed by you any day, mate."

Hold! Or somethin'.

The Winter Wolves come howling, with drums.

The whole thing was just such a cool scene.

Where would you say his head's at in those last few moments?

Well, it's filled with arrows, Dan.

It's all designed to have a story.

I think if you have your arms slightly back... "Pfft!"

And like, "What the fuck is that?" And then you turn, "Pfft!"

And then, then you're in line

-for her second one. -Yeah.

And then look up at which way they're coming from.

And that's the cheek. Yeah?

Will that be enough to make a fight of it?

We love you. We will miss you deeply.

We're very proud of the work you did.

This is a series wrap on Ser Criston Cole. Fabien Frankel. Amazing.

Fabien's performance speaks for itself.

Cole hasn't come all the way back around to be a hero,

but I think you realize this was a deeper individual

than maybe we gave him credit for at the beginning.

I love him as a friend, and really admire him as an actor.

And I'm sad to see him go.

Fabs, dear boy, what will I do without you?

My great friend throughout this whole process.

I'm just really excited for Fabien's next chapter.

I think he's gonna go off and make great movies.

God, you make me emotional.

It's been five years.

A lot of my sort of formative set years were on this job,

so I've made friends that I, you know, I'm gonna miss.

It's like moving to a different school.

And also, who knows what school is gonna have me.

Do you know what I mean?

I've laughed immensely on this show

and I will miss that.

I'll miss seeing Matt's face,

and Freddie's face, and Cookie's face,

and Glynn-Carney, and all the cast.

I'm so grateful to everyone who's worked on this show.

Every department.

Jobs like this come once in a million, and I'm eternally grateful for this show.

So thank you all so, so, so much.

We light the way!

We light the way! Yay!

Okay.

For another go.

I come as an envoy of Lord Borros Baratheon.

You are quite welcome, ser...?

Ser Arrion Baratheon,

cousin to Lord Borros.

No, no!

Cut there, cut there, cut there, well done.

That's a really fun fight. I really enjoyed that.

It's got that great moment, a mini stand-off,

and then you're into it.

And we prepped so much stuff.

We had storyboards for that.

We had a stunt rehearsal prior to the shoot day,

and worked very closely with Rowley.

So, they look to each other.

I'm like, okay, that's there.

-That's happen-- -That's happening. Down!

That's right, yeah. That's right, that's right.

This fight sequence

was one of the best days filming I think I've ever had.

I had so much fun.

It was the perfect combination of all the facets

of movie making and Loni directed it brilliantly.

These assassins come in and Gwayne literally springs into action,