We’re coming up on a year since the premiere of House of the Dragon, HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel series. The show has done a great job of carrying on the legacy of the original show, as fans met and fell in love with a whole new cast of schemers, warriors and would-be-rulers. That second season can’t come soon enough.
Until then, we can rewatch great episodes like “The Lord of the Tides,” which chronicle the final days of King Viserys I Targaryen, as he tries one last time to unite the rival branches of his family even as his body falls apart.
Catherine Goldschmidt served as the director of photography — basically the person responsible for the look of the episode — on that episode under director Geeta Patel with a script by Eileen Shim. “I don’t think I’ve worked harder in my life on a single hour of anything,” Goldschmidt told Gold Derby. “It’s extremely gratifying to have it received so well by everybody, and the truth is, as soon as we read that episode we felt like we had been given this huge gift,” she says. “It’s an incredibly special, well written, rich episode where all these characters get to have their moment. We really felt the weight of the responsibility of that, and I’m just usually gratified that people responded.”
House of the Dragon is “an incredibly exciting and inspiring place to work”
For my money, “The Lord of the Tides” was easily the best episode of the season, so Goldschmidt’s hard work paid off. By the sound of it, the House of the Dragon set is the kind of place that fosters that sort of creativity and drive. “It’s an incredibly exciting and inspiring place to work,” Goldschmidt said. “Every day you’re interacting with so many artists and everybody brings their all to a show like this and that just makes it such a wonderfully collaborative environment to create exciting imagery. I love it!”
Gold Derby, for the record, is a site about awards. The Emmys nominations will be announced in about a month, and I’m hoping to see House of the Dragon well-represented. Goldschmidt’s name should certainly be among the nominees, as should actor Paddy Considine for playing King Viserys.
In the meantime, the House of the Dragon team is currently working hard on season 2, which is shooting even as we speak. We’re covering that as it happens:
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