Matt Smith suffered “serious injury” making Game of Thrones prequel

Like Game of Thrones before it, HBO’s upcoming prequel series House of the Dragon has a huge cast. The biggest name in the cast is probably Matt Smith, who played the Eleventh Doctor on Doctor Who as well as Prince Phillip in The Crown. He plays Daemon Targaryen, the violent, ambitious younger brother of King Viserys I Targaryen (Paddy Considine). It’s a juicy role, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what Smith brings to it.

Perhaps because he’s so famous, some fans had an issue with Smith being cast in this key part, but according to The Hollywood Reporter, the producers were intrigued by his “weird androgynous quality,” which Smith may or may not take as a compliment, I dunno. “Matt is really the only person we talked about,” showrunner Ryan Condal told Den of Geek. “We would say, ‘Like a Matt Smith or a Matt Smith type’ when talking about Daemon. I just absolutely loved his work on The Crown as Prince Philip, who somewhat ironically is a similar character. He’s the second fiddle, in that case to the Queen of England, his own wife, and is a bit adrift. [Daemon] is similarly a bit of a rogue prince trying to find his footing and place in the world.”

"Matt was an incredibly accomplished actor who had played this really wide range of roles and was always doing different and interesting things. We loved the way he looked and we loved imagining him in that platinum blond Targaryen wig, sitting on a dragon. When we met with him, we just really hit it off creatively, and he brought a lot of interesting layers of pathos and psychology to the character that I think makes Daemon one of the most fully realized characters in George’s Westerosi universe."

Matt Smith wants to “subvert” his House of the Dragon character

Smith sounds like he took to role eagerly. “On the page, Daemon could really be one thing,” he told THR. “I was always interested in trying to subvert it a little into something else. I think there’s a sort of strange, sensitive nature to Daemon and quite a genuine loyalty to him and humanistic qualities that you can peel away and see.”

But Daemon is also a warrior, which means that Smith was involved in some action scenes, both hand-to-hand and in the air when Daemon is riding his dragon Caraxes. While performing a stunt, he suffered what THR called “a serious injury” to a disc in his neck. He kept filming despite pain and gave this interview while on the way to physical therapy months after filming had wrapped. “It’s a fucking pain in the neck — literally, physically and metaphorically,” said Smith.

Hopefully there are no lingering effects from that, both for Smith’s own sake and because Daemon has a large role to play in this series going forward.

Viserys I Targaryen is “a good man but a bad king” on House of the Dragon

Paddy Considine, who plays Daemon’s older brother the king, also sounded off to THR. “He’s a good man,” Considine said of his character, “but a bad king in that he’s trying to please everybody.” Sounds like a recipe for peace and tranquility.

We’ll see these two in action when House of the Dragon premieres on HBO and HBO Max on August 21.

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