Paddy Considine: Viserys Targaryen is “my favorite character I’ve ever played”
Paddy Considine played King Viserys I Targaryen on the first season of House of the Dragon. He died before the season finale, but he left an impression on fans, in large part because Considine poured himself into the role.
“He is my favorite character I ever played,” Considine recently told GoldDerby. “I felt like I earned it. He was the culmination of a lot of years of hard work for me. I was keen to play a character like that. I had gone on such a massive journey with acting from at times wanting to quit and being riddled with self-doubt. He came along at the right time, where I had enough experience and confidence to be able to just really jump in and play him quite fearlessly.”
While I was at the first official Game of Thrones convention in December of last year, I got a chance to ask Considine about how he fleshed out Viserys, and I absolutely loved how he explained his process:
Paddy Considine filmed all his House of the Dragon scenes out of order
Considine got to take Viserys from a vital man in the series premiere to a diseased wreck in Episode 8, “The Lord of the Tides,” which follows the last few days of his life. Shooting this progression was not easy, especially when episodes were shot out of sequence. “I had to carefully chart out the character’s physical deterioration journey,” Considine said. “We commenced shooting with episode seven, where he had already been severely debilitated by the disease. That was our starting point. It was almost as if we had to work our way backwards, which was one of the most rewarding aspects of playing him.”
Paddy, rest assured that you did such a phenomenal job that we had no idea it was filmed out of order.
House of the Dragon will continue without Paddy Considine, but he will definitely be remembered. Meanwhile, he’s filming the new movie Heads of State alongside Idris Elba, John Cena and Priyanka Chopra.
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