By As you most likely know, the first Game of Thrones prequel unofficially titled The Long Night by George R.R. Martin was very short-lived as it was cancelled last year after filming just the pilot episode. Since then, House of the Dragon was announced and casting for the Targaryen civil war adaptation is now underway.
But the curious tidbits about The Long Night (codenamed Bloodmoon) aren’t quite finished. Redanian Intelligence has found some casting information that could be of interest to those of you who wonder what might have been.
Naomi Watts’ character had a daughter
You may have heard that young actress Amy McPherson has been cast as a character named Aurelia in the untitled prequel as she updated her IMDb page herself. Redanian Intelligence has since learned that Aurelia is in fact the daughter of Naomi Watts’ character, who was announced as a series lead playing “a charismatic socialite with a dark secret”. Sadly; nothing else is known about either of them.
Children of the Forest
As teased in the official synopsis of the prequel, the show would have explored the true origin of White Walkers, whatever that means. And where there are White Walkers, there are Children of the Forest. We have learned that at least three Children would have appeared in The Long Night.
First is the one we have seen already in the original Game of Thrones series and in two iterations, no less. Leaf was first played by Octavia Alexandru in Season 4 and later recast with Kae Alexander in Season 6. In The Long Night, Leaf would have been played by young actress Doyin Ajiboye and this time she would have been a series regular.
Two other Children we have learned about are called Cloud and Lake, played by Seyi Andes-Pelumi and Felicia Mukasa respectively.
The twins
Back when the show was in its casting period, there was a curious report from Recapped, a reliable leak and NSFW site. They reported that Bloodmoon was looking for twins, young caucasian women in their 20s, but only a week later HBO changed their minds and started looking for real triplets instead.
It appears that in the end they settled for twins. Enter Caera and Vera, played by Leah Gayer and Mhairi Gayer respectively. You might recall us bringing up Caera from a Watchers on the Wall post way back. Turns out she was one of the twins.
We won’t begin to speculate who they are as it’s rather pointless now, but Caera does sound rather Valyrian with the “ae”.
A princess, an enclave boy and others
As George R.R. Martin has said, Westeros around the time of the prequel had a hundred kingdoms, not even seven. And these kingdoms probably had kings, queens, princes and princesses. We don’t have the casting for the princess herself, but we know of a “Princess double”, played by a Gabriella Morales. One can only guess which kingdom the princess belongs to.
Another casting is of two characters named Ianthe and Reynard. Ianthe was played by Rosy McEwen, and Reynard by Sean Rigby. Sadly, that’s all we know about these two.
If you recall the set photos from a year ago captured by BloodmoonIrl, there was a mention of an “enclave” on one of the schedule sheets. Now this enclave is mentioned again. Zephan Hanson Amissah played an “Enclave boy” in the cancelled pilot.
In the same batch of photos there was mention of an “oubliette” which is a form of a dungeon. Ewan Bailey was cast as Dungeon keep. We’re assuming he is the keep of the same oubliette. For the Witcher fans out there, Ewan Bailey might be known as the man who lent his voice to the charismatic banker dwarf Vimme Vivaldi in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
Old actors, new names
Initially, about a dozen of actors were announced for Bloodmoon, but none of their character names were ever disclosed. Among the newly revealed cast from the initial announcement were Richard McCabe and Dixie Egerickx. They played characters named Robben and Maiev respectively.
Later, two others were discovered, two Georginas at that: Georgina Campbell and Georgina Beedle. The former played a character named Sorcha, the latter played Flavia.
The undead
Lastly, here’s one more curious tidbit. HBO hired Alex Reynolds as a choreographer and movement director. One of her duties includes “movement design for undead“. So, as there would be White Walkers, there would be undead as well.
And that’s it for The Long Night. From now on, Fire and Blood will reign, and plenty of it.
They cast only black people as Children of the Forest.
That’s an OK way to add minority actors without breaking the European Fantasy theme of the story.
There was a rumour that in the spinoff originally the Children of the Forest were human (and black) but they were magically cursed and turned into CotF, which would have been a bit problematic.
whatever, the other spinoff “House of the Dragon” that is happening has GRR Martin heavily involved and will be about history of Targaryens and their conquests and sound smiles better than this mess here… glad it was cancelled.