“They understood that if we left the set, they were going to make it without us.”
TheHouse of the Dragonteam were forced to weather a global pandemic during the making of season 1.
And for season 2, they faced more unenviable circumstances: industry-wide strikes.
‘House of the Dragon’ co-creator Ryan Condal on set of season 2.Ollie Upton/HBO
Soon after, the Screen Actors Guild did the same, causing a months-long standstill in the industry.
House of the Dragon, however, was in a unique situation.
The series shoots abroad, with London’s Leavesden Studios serving as their primary base of operations.
Olivia Cooke’s Alicent Hightower, Ewan Mitchell’s Aemond Targaryen in ‘House of the Dragon’ season 2.Theo Whitman/HBO
Ollie Upton/HBO
“It was rough.
“We were prepared for it,” Condal says.
“The writing really was done.
Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke for EW’s ‘House of the Dragon’ season 2 cover.Rachell Smith
The writing isalwaysdone on the show because it has to be.
You cannot prep a show that is this complex [otherwise].
We’re shooting two feature-size film units every day.
“That’s why we spend a year writing in advance,” he adds.
That was probably the most stress it caused at the outset.”
Theo Whitman/HBO
Hess remembers the scripts were done by January 2023.
The following month, they were doing full cast read-throughs of every single episode.
“The directors rehearsed a lot of the big scenes in advance,” she recalls.
“We did rewrites after doing the cast read-throughs, so we got a lot of preparation done.”
She clarifies they would’ve done this regardless of a strike.
“We felt really good about what we had already.
So when the strike happened, we definitely were pencils down.
The typical writing process continues to evolve all the way through filming as tweaks are made here and there.
The WGA strike, however, made that impossible.
“But thankfully, we had very polished scripts.”
It didn’t feel great,” she says.
They were tortured over their decision of what to do.”
Rachell Smith
Because of the show’s Equity contract, SAG-AFTRA ultimately urged the stars to fulfill their obligations.
“We were living our normal lives.”
House of the Dragonseason 2 premieres June 16 on HBO and Max.
