Prosthetics designer talks creating Viserys’ decay and The Last of Us clickers

Season 1 of House of the Dragon may be over, but the image of King Viserys I Targaryen begging his family to get along while he reveals his decaying face for the first time will linger for a long time to come. Though House of the Dragon recast many characters over the course of its decade-spanning first season, Viserys was played by actor Paddy Considine for the entire run. Instead of recasting him once he hit his sunset years, the show employed detailed prosthetics and special effects, combined with a stellar performance from Considine, to give the appearance of Viserys’ gradual decline.

Of course, age was never Viserys’ biggest problem; it was the disease which ate away at his body. At the start, Viserys is a healthy man with a sharp wit and sound body. By the time he closed his eyes for the final time in Episode 8, he was emaciated, missing parts of his body, and often delirious from living in constant pain from leprosy for nearly a quarter of a century.

King Viserys’ transformation was “very grounded in the real world of horrible diseases”

Creating that visual journey for King Viserys was a huge task for the show’s makeup department. Fortunately, House of the Dragon employed seasoned prosthetics designer Barrie Gower to create the effects. Gower is the artist behind the Night King on Game of Thrones and Vecna on Stranger Things; we won Emmy awards for both shows. He also worked on Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Chernobyl, The Witcher, and more. Needless to say, King Vizzy T was in good hands.

“We researched various flesh-eating disorders,” Gower told Variety. “Necrosis, leprosy, all kinds of horrible references. Lots of interesting shapes, colors and ulcers. They could give us a good indication for textures, colors, glosses, how dry things would be. It’s very grounded in the real world of horrible diseases.”

"Over the course of the season we had about seven different stages, which would be told through his make-up, hair, the receding hairline, the pallor and the color of his skin, texture of the skin, and then various small sores on the body. We had little silicone molds that you can press onto the skin and peel them off. We had cheek appliances, little sores that were shaved into Paddy’s own beard and his hairline. With the silicone bald cap, we could recede the hairline and had sores in there."

As incredible as the work done by Gower’s team was, by the time Viserys was in his last stages of life the damage was too terrible for any amount of makeup to convey. You might recall that in Episode 8, “The Lord of the Tides,” we got a few scenes of Viserys without a shirt where we got to see just how sickly and frail he’d become. Those moments required not only prosthetics, but visual effects and a body double as well.

“For one or two scenes, we had a body double who was very slender and had a very pronounced bone structure,” Gower said. “We shot some of the scenes with sores on his back, necrosis on his collarbone and shoulders. Then we shot the same scene with Paddy, and VFX were able to manipulate Paddy’s face onto the double’s body.”

Having double the actors meant that the prosthetics team needed to double the work. By that final episode of King Viserys’ reign, the process to fit Paddy Considine with the prosthetics and makeup took nearly five hours.

“Viserys’ hair was getting so thin and receded by that point, we no longer had a lace wig,” Gower recalled. “We individually inserted all the hairs and punched them into the silicone prosthetic. Every day he’d have a new, punched silicone prosthetic. We’d be doing Paddy’s makeup at one end of the trailer, then we’d be doing his double on the other end of the trailer. He’d also have a bald cap with the punched hair, so we could shoot from behind or 3/4 behind.”

Even with all those effects, no amount of prosthetics could simulate the final shot where Viserys takes off his mask at a family dinner. That scene needed extra visual effects work for Viserys’ missing eye and the hole in his cheek.

“We knew we wouldn’t be able to achieve that final look completely practically, because we would have all these holes in Paddy’s head,” Gower said. “We had fully prosthetic make-up that covered all of Paddy’s face for those scenes. We had areas that were painted green for the visual effects department to remove in post. They also tucked in the build of Paddy’s face, so they made him a lot more slender and gaunt.”

Gower says the ultimate goal when designing the look for King Viserys in his old age was for viewers to feel “sadness” and “remorse” when they beheld how he’d changed, but not disgust. This was a character we’d grown to know over the course of eight episodes, and we’d seen him at his healthiest and when he was ravaged by disease. We shall never see his like again.

Designing the clickers for The Last of Us was “a dream come true”

Though House of the Dragon season 1 is at an end, Gower’s work for HBO goes on. The next project he’s working on for the studio is The Last of Us, the highly ambitious adaptation of Naughty Dog’s seminal zombie apocalypse video game. Gower is designing the clickers, people who have been infected by an airborne fungus that causes mushroom-like growths to overtake their body, leading them to rely on echolocation to find their next bloody meal.

“It was a bit of a dream come true,” Gower said. “For a monster maker, it’s exactly the type of job that I got into the business to do. We were really lucky. The scripts are fantastic. There are some really terrifying moments. There’s a lot for the fans in there. I think it’s fair to say they’re going to be very happy.”

"From what I’ve seen of the show and what we shot, it’s very true and authentic to the game. I’m hoping the fans will be over the moon with it and it will spawn a load of new fans who will be introduced to it through the show rather than the video game."

The Last of Us premieres on HBO and HBO Max on January 15.

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