This interview contains spoilers for the first four episodes of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms season one.
The Game of Thrones franchise has benefitted from going small. The latest installment, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, isn’t about saving the world from ice zombies or stopping a familial civil war—at least in its first few episodes, it’s been the story of an honorable knight, Ser Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey), and his quest to do the right thing and maybe earn a little fame in the process. But that all went out the window last week. After attacking Prince Aerion Targaryen (Finn Bennett), in defense of his puppeteer love interest Tanselle (Tanzyn Crawford), Dunk finds out that his squire Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell) is actually a Targaryen as well.
Episode four picks up with Dunk imprisoned, with a small shot at freedom. Prince Aerion has requested a Trial of the Seven. Both Dunk and Prince Aerion must gather a team of six other knights to face off until one yields. As per the ancient tradition, the victor will be vindicated in the eyes of the gods and proven innocent. As a knight with no major house backing, Dunk’s quest to gather a team goes until the very last second—until Prince Aerion’s own brother Prince Baelor, an heir to the Iron Throne, decides to take Dunk’s side.
The revelation is straight out of George R.R. Martin’s novella “The Hedge Knight,” which A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms showrunner Ira Parker has faithfully adapted all season long. As the series heads into its home stretch, Parker took time out of the very early days of production on the already-announced second season to tell GQ about his journey to bring the show to life, what he has in common with Dunk, that now-famous series-opening sequence, and much more.
GQ: How did this opportunity first come your way?
Ira Parker: I got a text at four o’clock in the morning from HBO asking how I felt about Dunk and Egg. I very quickly read all the books and got my ducks in a row. By the end of that week, I probably knew this period surrounding Dunk and Egg better than George knew this period; it was a real deep dive. I had some great conversations about it with HBO, then I went off to Santa Fe, met with George, and we had some more conversations. It’s all been so straightforward and so easy. It doesn’t feel like this is the way it’s supposed to go.
Was there any part of you that felt like it should have been more difficult throughout that process?
Look, there’s a lot of hard work that goes in behind the scenes to make things so easy. The thing is, that even when they don’t go easy, you’ve still put in all that work. You always expect it’s going to go well. It just never does. So this was a nice, pleasant surprise [laughs].
In terms of doing the research around this time period of Dunk and Egg, what were you leaning on to help inform that?
The world I was always very familiar with because I’d spent a season on House of the Dragon. I had read the main series in college and watched the TV show. The world was very easy. In terms of when I came specifically to Dunk and Egg, it was trying to figure out what informs their lives as they go through the different chapters.
There’s sort of an Egg the boy, Egg the prince, and Egg the king sections to their lives. A lot of this stuff is unfortunately never going to be used in our show because it’s all very interesting, and it all happens later. We like to hint towards those things, show growth towards moments that people know canonically happen later on, but really, we just try to focus as much as we can on simple storytelling. The here and the now. What is the story we’re telling in season one, “The Hedge Knight.” Then “The Sworn Sword,” which we just started shooting yesterday, is, again, a very contained story set between two houses and another distant quarter of The Reach. Then, hopefully one day, they [HBO] let us suit up for “The Mystery Knight.”
I think he mentioned the phrase “faithful adaptation” about four times in his first three words. It was very important for him; he loves “The Hedge Knight,” and he loves these characters. These books are very important for him. He wanted them to be reflected well in a TV show, which was easy for me, because after coming to and reading these books, I very much agree with that. I like these stories as they are presented. I like the tone in which they are presented. We were of the same mind. The rest was, Where are we going to fill out this series? Obviously, these novellas are quite slim, even as novellas go, perhaps. I think the original publication of “Hedge Knight” was something like 84 pages.
Yeah, that sounds right. I re-read the first one about a month ago, and it felt brisk.
A lot of that is Dunk’s internal monologue as one of the angstiest characters in Westeros. There’s a lot happening up there that he’s worried about. Trying to figure out where we were going to—first of all, get out a little bit of that inner monologue, fill out this world and the color of this world, how to make it into a TV show. Can this even be a TV show?
