Graham McTavish’s House of the Dragon character is the rare “pure” man in Westeros

We’re less than a week away from the premiere of House of the Dragon, the highly-anticipated Game of Thrones prequel series from HBO. Like Thrones before it, House of the Dragon is based on the works of author George R.R. Martin; in this case, his “fake history” book Fire & Blood. And true to Martin’s works, the show is filled with morally gray characters, each capable of doing heroic things and utterly horrific things depending on the moment.

It’s a rare thing in Westeros when a character is actually just a good person straight up, although they do crop up once in a while; Barristan Selmy (Ian McElhinney) comes to mind from the original show. House of the Dragon will feature another stalwart Kingsguard knight with a heart of gold: Ser Harrold Westerling, played by Graham McTavish (Outlander, The Hobbit).

Ser Harrold Westerling is a “pure” Kingsguard knight

“In a world of vipers, which is the world of anything to do with Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon, he’s a straight arrow,” McTavish told the Daily News. “He’s a moral center in the story. He’s not corrupt. He’s not personally ambitious in the same way that other characters might be. He doesn’t have that kind of agenda. So he represents something quite pure in a world where that’s hard to come by.”

According to the Daily News, Ser Harrold Westerling is promoted to the vaunted position of Lord Commander of the Kingsguard in the House of the Dragon series premiere by King Viserys Targaryen (Paddy Considine). Westerling will take that role quite seriously, defending both Viserys and his heir, Princess Rhaenyra (played by Milly Alcock as a young woman and Emma D’Arcy as an adult).

“He becomes the principal protection and shadow to everything that the king is involved in,” McTavish explained. “The Kingsguard, they’re a sort of warrior monk-type. They get chosen as children, they’re not allowed to marry, they don’t have relationships, they don’t have any money, they forsake all their land and estates. They are simply focused on looking after, in this case, the princess and the king.”

"It always sounds a little boring, but he’s a very interesting counterpoint to the other stuff that’s happening. [He’s] utterly discrete and utterly reliable."

It’s interesting to hear McTavish talk about the Kingsguard as these bastions of moral purity. That’s the way they are supposed to function, although we saw on Game of Thrones that there are oh so many ways for it to go wrong. Yet despite despicable Kingsguard knights like Ser Meryn Trant from the original series, there are plenty of legendary members of the Kingsguard who served with honor, and Ser Harrold sounds to be one of them.

Graham McTavish didn’t read Fire & Blood to prepare for House of the Dragon, but he loved Game of Thrones

Ser Harrold Westerling plays a very small part in Fire & Blood, but House of the Dragon will be building out the role a bit more. As such, it’s almost fitting that Graham McTavish didn’t read Martin’s book to prepare for the role, since so much of his material is being invented for the series.

“I have a habit of really not reading the source material for these things, because in the end you’re working from the script,” he said. “I want to also have the imaginative freedom to think, this is how I see Ser Harrold. I always try and approach these things without that baggage so it’s a little more of a clean slate, so that you make your own imprint.”

Despite not reading Fire & Blood, McTavish was quite familiar with Westeros before he signed on to House of the Dragon. “Right from that moment where poor old Sean Bean (Ned Stark) has his head chopped off in the first season [of Game of Thrones], I was completely hooked. We’d never seen anything like that before. You’re like, ‘What? You’re killing Sean Bean? This is going to be an interesting show.’ And this very much lives in that tradition. There are lots of surprises and shocks.”

McTavish is also keenly aware of the backlash to Game of Thrones season 8, and the pressure that comes with it for the successor show. He tries not to think about it too much. “There is a very loyal fanbase,” he said. “They have their views and there are the stories themselves, but at the same time, we also needed to make it our own. So my version or [the other actors’] versions of any of the other characters, they’re down to us and in collaboration with the writers and directors.”

"You can’t be so scared of what you’re involved in. It was the same when I did The Hobbit. That came off the back of Lord of the Rings and there was huge expectation. It was the same with Outlander; there was this massive fanbase. You were very conscious that there was an expectation from those fans of what it should be like. But we always have to park that and proceed independently."

Ser Harrold Westerling will play a larger role in House of the Dragon than in Fire & Blood

It also sounds like Ser Harrold might be sticking around a bit longer than his book counterpart. In Fire & Blood, Ser Harrold Westerling dies in 112 AC, a full 17 years before the Dance of the Dragons civil war even begins. House of the Dragon will feature a 10-year time jump, which will presumably bring us a bit closer to the start of the war by the season’s end. While we don’t know for sure how Harrold will factor into events on the whole, McTavish did confirm that his character appears both before and after the time jump.

At least Ser Harrold didn’t have to get recast for the time jump, unlike the actors playing Rhaenyra or Alicent Hightower. “They do less-drastic stuff for me,” McTavish said. “Basically, I had a darker beard in the first half. In my case, it was a slow deterioration from someone who was 50 to someone who was 60. I was very pleased. There were no wigs or anything like that.”

There is one regret McTavish has about his time on House of the Dragon, however. “My children were very disappointed that I didn’t get to ride a dragon,” he said. “I knew that right from the beginning I wasn’t going to be riding a dragon, but everyone wants to ride a dragon. It was very frustrating.”

How far we’ve come from the days when Daenerys and her three dragons were hardly ever ridden by anyone except her, and eventually her boyfriend on one or two occasions. House of the Dragon is going to be a very different, much more dragon-centric era of Westeros.

House of the Dragon premieres on HBO and HBO Max on August 21!

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