Matt Smith took a sword to the face while filming House of the Dragon

San Diego Comic-Con was this past weekend, and all the studios brought out their big guns to get fans hyped for the television shows and movies heading to screens in the next few months. House of the Dragon, the long-awaited Game of Thrones prequel, was no exception. HBO held a panel for the show in the famed Hall H, where Comic-Con’s biggest announcements are made. Actors Matt Smith, Paddy Considine, Olivia Cooke, Emma D’Arcy, Steve Toussaint, Eve Best, Milly Alcock and Emily Carey were all to talk about their characters. Even Fire & Blood author George R.R. Martin showed up. It was a fun affair with lots to talk about.

One particular bit of behind-the-scenes dirt that came out during the panel is that Matt Smith (Daemon Targaryen) was struck in the head with a sword while filming the show’s first season. There’s one scene that we can catch a glimpse of in the trailer where Smith’s Daemon is fighting against Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) during a tourney. Apparently, things went a little sideways in rehearsal.

“Our first rehearsal with Matt, I smashed him in the face with a sword,” Frankel said during the panel, per The Hollywood Reporter. Fortunately, Smith seems to be a pretty good sport about the whole thing. He confirmed that he did, indeed, take a sword to the face before joking that it, “Scarred up pretty good.”

This isn’t the first on-set injury we’ve heard about for Smith while he was filming House of the Dragon. In THR’s fantastic deep dive articles about the show last week, it was revealed that Smith had also sustained a “serious injury” to a disc in his neck while working on the show, which resulted in the actor having to go to physical therapy.

Daemon Targaryen does live life pretty dangerously. Here’s hoping that Smith is able to take it a little easier if House of the Dragon gets a second season.

For Matt Smith, it is most certainly not “Morbin’ time”

While the House of the Dragon panel was mostly about…well, House of the Dragon, one fan couldn’t resist bringing up another one of Smith’s projects. No, not Doctor Who — Morbius, the vampire antihero movie and Sony’s latest installment in its Spider-Man villain franchise. Morbius has become something of…I don’t want to call it a cult classic, but irony culture has certainly had a field day with the thing. The movie bombed pretty hard, but fans on the internet (many of whom haven’t even seen Morbius) have latched onto made-up catch phrases like “It’s Morbin’ time” and dubbed the movie a work of brilliance.

The A.V. Club reports that during the Q&A at the panel, a fan came up to the mic to ask a question of the panel, and began by proclaiming: “Matt Smith, it’s Morbin’ time!”

Smith, funnily enough, had no idea what the person was talking about. “It’s what?” he asked. This caused the fan to have to explain how much he enjoyed Smith in Morbius, before finally asking his question: “[H]ow would your character in Morbius fit into the Game Of Thrones universe?”

Ever the professional, Smith actually answered this question as seriously as he could: “Well, I mean he’s a vampire, so I think he’d struggle first off. I don’t know really know how he’d fit into the Game Of Thrones universe. I think he would be a fish of water, in truth. I don’t think he’s got the chops to do it.”

“But I’m glad you watched a completely different movie,” the actor added.

House of the Dragon is out August 21 on HBO and HBO Max. Morbius is available on several video-on-demand platforms and is expected to come to Netflix later this year, if you’re masochistic enough to watch it.

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h/t Digital Spy