Sam C. Wilson (a.k.a.
Blood), Mark Stobbart (a.k.a.
Cheese), and co-creator Ryan Condal unpack the key book-to-screen changes.
Mark Stobbart as Cheese and Sam C. Wilson as Blood on ‘House of the Dragon’ season 2.Courtesy of Ollie Upton/HBO
That was by design.
Series co-creatorRyan Condalwanted to preserve the pair’s introduction as much as possible.
“That was definitely us trying to protect this moment.
Mark Stobbart’s Cheese walking his rat-catching dog on ‘House of the Dragon’.Courtesy of Ollie Upton/HBO
Everybody knows it’s coming.
People are waiting for you to play the hits.
Martin’sFire and Blood: “Make it a son for a son.”
Daemon (Matt Smith) recruits Blood and Cheese on ‘House of the Dragon’.Courtesy of Ollie Upton/HBO
He will be known to the ages as Blood.
(The book originally describes the character as an ex-Gold Cloak.)
“Yeah, it is this deep, but I went a bit further for Blood.
Sam C. Wilson and Mark Stobbart on ‘House of the Dragon’.Courtesy of Ollie Upton/HBO
The other is a rat catcher with gambling debts who works in the Red Keep.
History will remember him as Cheese.
There’s technically a third member of this group: Cheese’s dog.
(“We were nothing compared to this dog,” Stobbart jokes.)
Not much is known about these characters inFire and Blood.
Martin writes, “Their true names are lost to history.”
“It came through a director I’d done jobs for before,” Stobbart recalls of the audition.
“I didn’t have any inkling as to who it could be.
I didn’t know the world.
There was a name.
Sam, can you remember what the names were?”
Wilson starts typing into the search bar on his email inbox to find the answer.
“It was Charlie!”
“It was Borris and Charlie instead of Blood and Cheese.”
Those weren’t the only tactics used to keep these characters under wraps.
The sides the actors used for the audition had different dialogue.
Instead of “going to kill” a royal prince, it read “going to kidnap.”
It really developed through the shoots with the things we were talking about with Alan, with Ryan.
I remember auditioning for it with more of a twinkle than what ended up being on screen.
From the bits I’ve seen, it’s a lot darker than the job that we accepted.”
Blood and Cheese have their orders: sneak into the castle disguised as rat catchers and kill Aemond.
The events are far more gruesome inFire and Blood.
There are a few factors as to why the series doesn’t strictly adapt the scene this way.
The other challenges stemmed from the logistics of utilizing child actors.
“We stood around a cot with a doll,” Stobbart says.
It ends up being two utterly incompetent hitmen.”
That, to me, will be a job really well done."
New episodes ofHouse of the Dragonair Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO.
