House of the Dragon: they experienced the crazy Battle of the Gosier, they tell us
Giant boats, millions of liters of water and hair-raising rides on the backs of dragons: an extraordinary behind-the-scenes look at the first episode of season 3. The actors speak to Première.
Fire & Blood readers have been waiting for this for years. The Battle of the Gosier, one of the most spectacular clashes imagined by George RR Martin, finally opens season 3 of House of the Dragon. A climactic Dance of Dragons battle, which sees Corlys Velaryon’s mighty fleet clash with the forces of the Triarchy, as the dragons transform the naval clash into a veritable aerial battlefield.
Months of preparation and filming
On paper, the chapter already looked like a blockbuster. On screen, HBO created a sequence of a magnitude rarely seen on television. Ships built life-size, giant pools, hundreds of extras and stuntmen, dragons colliding in the sky… For several months, the series ceased to be a television production and was transformed into a cinema blockbuster.
“It took eight to twelve weeks to shoot, and that doesn’t even include the time spent in rehearsals!”, tells us Steve Toussaint, who plays Lord Corlys Velaryon. Nor the one that Ryan Condal, the set teams and the stuntmen spent on choreographing all of this beforehand. It’s truly phenomenal. A sequence so huge that the total time must be half a year, maybe even more. We stayed three months on this single episode. And it’s precisely this time that allowed us to do something so crazy!”
“I’m almost afraid to see her on screen,” admits the actor. Because everything on this shoot was thought of on the scale of this XXL story. Abubakar Salim, who plays Alyn of Hull, explains:
“Concretely, it was a huge set. There were a lot of blue screens all around us. But they had also built real gigantic boats on which we played. We had to imagine the sea, the waves and of course the dragons flying above us….”
Two giant pools of 3 million liters of water
To bring this battle to life, the production even had two huge pools built. One accommodated a dry ship, the other a second boat submerged in several meters of water. These giant tanks containing three million liters of water were filled twice a day using a pump system specially designed for filming.
“There were divers everywhere for safety, in case anyone fell in the water or got tripped up in the ropes. And then the filming itself was controlled chaos. We spent weeks rehearsing the choreography of the fights with the stuntmen and other actors, before ending up on these ships mounted on jacks that reproduced the movements of the sea. There was fake blood on the deck, mannequins playing corpses… and there was We had to make our way through all that.”
Like in an amusement park
Listening to the two stars of the naval battle in question, the set sometimes looked less like a series setting than a giant attraction:
“It’s really an impressive place and, when things go wrong, everything can go in all directions. The stuntmen are constantly throwing themselves into the water, right next to you. There’s fire, blood spurting from who knows where. It’s quite crazy to experience. It’s a bit like being in an amusement park, except that you’re part of the attraction and you have to know how to stay serious to play in its conditions” continues Steve Toussaint.
And even once the final clap was given, the set continued to have its effect: the actors continued to feel the rolling long after leaving the set!
“Every time we set foot off the board, we felt seasick because these boats moved like real boats.”
Dracarys from the air
This Battle of the Gosier was not only played out on the decks of the boats. From the air, Harry Collett, aka Jacaerys Velaryon, also spent his days fighting against the elements… The actor spent weeks on the production’s dragon simulator, this famous “dragon buck”, a mechanical device reproducing the back of a dragon and used to film the aerial riding scenes.
“We rehearsed a lot and practiced on the dragon simulator used to shoot the flying scenes. The set is very sophisticated and, when I’m on that machine, it projects the sky and clouds behind me. That background helps me a lot when acting. There are also gigantic fans blowing wind in every direction and the director, Loni Peristere, was shouting his instructions into a megaphone to drown out all the din.”
At the heart of the chaos of the set, he even slips in a spontaneous improvisation, captured on the spot and finally preserved in editing:
“The funny thing is that the word ‘Dracarys’, which orders my dragon to breathe fire, wasn’t written in the script. I said it naturally while we were filming and they kept it. I had to say it, it was the chance or never!”
“Thank God we’re done with this battle.”
But behind the spectacular, there remains above all the memory of a particularly difficult shoot. An experience as impressive on screen as it is trying for the actors in the casting and the entire production team:
“The idea of doing a sequence like that again, a gigantic battle, is sexy! Really cool. But in reality, it’s so hard,” sighs Steve Toussaint. “I remember coming out of that saying to myself, ‘How does Jason Statham keep doing action movies like that?’ It’s so exhausting.”
“Especially since we had to do all that with our armor on our backs, our big boots on our feet and helmets on our heads,” adds Abubakar Salim. “We’re cooking slowly in there. It’s terrible.”
Steve Toussaint then bursts out laughing before concluding: “So in reality, when it’s over, we say to ourselves: Thank God, we’re done with this battle!”
House of the Dragon, season 3, to watch every Monday in France on HBO Max.
