Makeup artist Barrie Gower has risen to the top of the industry in recent years. He worked on Game of Thrones, the biggest show in the world, helped with prosthetics on The Witcher, did makeup for Chernobyl, worked on Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness…and now he’s returning to Westeros for House of the Dragon, a Game of Thrones prequel series set some 200 years before the story we know.
“I think… again, we can’t really say an awful lot about it, but I think the one thing we can say is that, going into it, it’s obviously a completely different story to Game of Thrones,” Gower told Digital Spy. He’s right, of course; you won’t see any Game of Thrones characters show up here. Instead, House of the Dragon is about a civil war fought between rival factions of the Targaryen dynasty back when the family was at the height of its power. The show is every bit as complex as Game of Thrones, and features a cast just as huge, but it’s a whole new game.
HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon is “really well-written”
We can expect certain things out a Game of Thrones prequel show: great actors, amazing special effects, sumptuous costumes…but in the end it all comes down to the story. If the writing on House of the Dragon isn’t good, none of the other stuff will matter.
Happily, Gower is very impressed with what he’s seen. “The scripts are incredible,” he said. “They’re really incredible. And it’s going to be very exciting to see how that’s received. But it’s really well-written, and there are some fantastic stories in there. That’s all I can say, really, about that.”
House of the Dragon premieres on HBO and HBO Max on August 21. In the meantime, you can see more of Gower’s work on Stranger Things, where he helped design the menacing Vecna. As many fans guessed, the Night King from Game of Thrones had a direct influence on the Stranger Things villain. Why not stick with what works?
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