By HBO’s much-anticipated Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon is expected to finally start filming in just a few days time. The series is set during the Targaryyen civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons and features an ensemble cast including Paddy Considine as King Viserys Targaryen Matt Smith as Daemon Targaryen, Emma D’Arcy as Rhaenyra Targaryen, Olivia Cooke as Alicent Hightower, Rhys Ifans as Otto Hightower, Soyona Mizuno as Mysaria, Eve Best as Rhaenys Targaryen and Steve Toussaint as Corlys Velaryon.
While some of the main roles for the first season have been announced by HBO, there are still many characters left to cast, after all it’s based on a novel by George R. R. Martin. A couple of months ago we reported on a audition video for Ser Criston Cole, the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. While the content was later removed, we now found another video, revealing that HBO is looking to cast (or has already cast) two of Cole’s brothers in arms: The formidable Cargyll twins.
The video was publicly shared by brothers John and Michael Cooke auditioning for the roles of ‘Edgar‘ and ‘Armand‘ in a project titled ‘Red Gun‘. It’s been known for a while that ‘Red Gun’ is the code-name used by HBO for House of the Dragon and the video dialogue makes it pretty clear that we’re indeed looking at a Westeros setting as you can see for yourself.
As for the roles: It’s an established industry practice to use codenames with the same initials as the characters they are for. Conveniently, there are the Kingsguard twin-brothers Arryk and Erryk Cargyll that fit the formula. Both played a prominent role during the Dance of the Dragons, fighting on opposite sides of the war. Based on this and the dialogue, our assumption is that ‘Armand’ is Arryk and ‘Edgar’ is Erryk.
This is likely a scene written for the audition only and won’t be featured as such in the show. It does however give us an impression of the characters and their opinion on a certain prince ‘Adrian‘, who – let’s face it – can only be the future Aegon II. As is normally the case with such videos, the actors likely did not get the job in the end, although we’ll have to wait and see who is ultimately chosen.
There is no official release date for House of the Dragon yet but the show is expected to air on HBO sometime in 2022. We’ll continue to keep you updated, whenever we find something interesting!
I would love to play a role in game of throns the dance of the dragons would be a dream come true