A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms stars talk chemistry and the show's comedic tone

This week, HBO premiered the first trailer for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, its next Game of Thrones spinoff. Set roughly 100 years before the original series and 100 years after House of the Dragon, this new show is a very different beast. Gone are the world-ending White Walker invasions and wars between dragons. Instead, we follow a lowborn knight named Ser Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey) and his mouthy squire Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell) as they get up to various adventures around Westeros. If Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon took place mostly in the halls of power of the realm, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms brings us down among the commonfolk for a much more grounded tale filled with humor and heart.

That lighter tone is on full display in the first trailer, from its bouncing medieval score by new Westeros maestro Dan Romer to the many jokes that get flung this way or that. HBO wants us to know we'll have a good time with this show.

To go along with this trailer drop, the studio sent none other than Dunk and Egg themselves to New York Comic Con, where they took part in a panel and interviews alongside series creators Ira Parker and George R.R. Martin. The result was a funny yet insightful panel that revealed a ton of new details about the series.

Afterward, Winter Is Coming was fortunate enough to take part in interviews with Claffey and Ansell, where the duo went into a bit more detail about the tonal shift for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms star says comedic aspects are "earned"

"We knew pretty early on as well that we were gonna be leaning into the comedic aspects of things," Claffey said.

"Yeah, but also...it's definitely, I think the lighter version of this, because I haven't watched [Game of Thrones], is probably the most disturbing thing I've still been in," added Ansell. "It's not pitch perfect, happy, blah-de-blah."

"The comedic aspects, they're earned kind of, toward the start," Claffey continued. "For any fans who are kind of nervous about that side of things...I, of course, was wondering, self-conscious, like was I going to deliver these things in such a sort of serious world...and it does work. It does work in the end. And you still get your political conflict, and your gory violence and all these things as well."

That all checks out with the source material, Martin's novella The Hedge Knight. That book sees Dunk and Egg head to a tourney at Ashford Meadow in the Reach, where Dunk hopes to make a name for himself and impress some lord or other into taking him into his service. It does have much more humor than Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books, but there are still plenty of the politicking and devious plot twists the author is known for. Just because Dunk and Egg crack a lot of jokes, don't expect them to necessarily be safe from danger.

The tone works in the books because of Dunk and Egg themselves, who have a very natural banter thanks to Egg's need to incessantly backtalk at Ser Duncan. Claffey homed in on this aspect as a reason the lighter tone works in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

"I think the actual characters of Dunk and Egg lend themselves to a sort of a comedic thing, you know in that sort of way," he said. "So I think it was kind of easy to do towards the end, really. We found a sort of a sweet spot with it."

Peter Claffey and Dexter Sol Ansell have incredible chemistry on-screen and off

Of course, none of that comedic banter between Dunk and Egg would work if the onscreen duo didn't have good chemistry. Dunk and Egg are one of the best pairings George R.R. Martin has ever written in Westeros, so it's absolutely crucial that the show got their castings right. Fortunately, it seems like they completely nailed it.

From both the trailer and the panel, it's clear Claffey and Ansell get on famously. Claffey talked up his costar during the panel, when asked whether their real-life relationship mirrors their onscreen relationship at all.

"[Dexter] started filming at the age of 9, and he's 11 now. And the concept that you're working with a 9-year-old is over within half an hour of a day on set, and you realize you're working with a 25-year-old in an 11-year-old's body," Claffey said. "He's just incredibly mature and...I'm really in awe...like even looking back at who I was when 9, 10, and 11, I could not be able to come out here and do this, do the things that Dexter, that I've seen Dexter do, the performances that Dexter has done. And I do think Dunk looks up to Egg a lot, and looks to him for guidance. And I find myself doing the exact same thing with Dexter."

Just because Ansell's mature on set, don't think that doesn't mean that he and Claffey got up to no shennanigans during filming. The pair revealed that they spent quite a lot of time at a local arcade during their downtime, and are saving up all their tickets for a big prize. ("A PS5," according to Ansell.)

"One of my favorite ways to decompress after set, because we had so much work to do, was to come back and kick Dexter's ass in Mario Kart," Claffey said.

"I kept winning!" Ansell shot back.

"No, don't change the subject," Claffey joked. "You were looking at my back bumper, Princess Peach."

If the Comic Con banter is anything to go by, I think we're in good hands with these two playing Dunk and Egg.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms premieres January 18, 2026 on HBO and HBO Max. Its first season will run for six episodes.