A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: the “poop” scene explained by its creator

Ira Parker fully accepts it and reveals bluntly: “It’s not a fake ass shitting on screen!”

With A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, the new universe derived from Game of Thrones adopts a very different tone from the parent series.

In an interview with Variety, showrunner Ira Parker returns to his ostensible desire to show Westeros differently, and accepts his much-commented scatological joke from the first episode. He first explains the opening of the series:

“Everything is from Dunk’s point of view. We wanted the audience to feel exactly what he was feeling at that moment. One of the very first jokes is Dunk feeling like a hero. He picks up his old master’s sword and thinks, ‘Maybe I can be that guy. Maybe I can be a knight.’ But obviously he’s not a hero. None of us are deep down. And suddenly his stomach hurts and he shits himself because he hears the music and the call, but he’s not ready yet… I feel like a lot of decisions in life are made like that: big thoughts, big dreams, then reality sets in and everything becomes much more complicated.”

Dunk’s journey in season 1 is nothing exceptional, continues Ira Parker, who draws a modern analogy: “It’s like someone who leaves their small town for New York or Los Angeles and says to themselves: ‘I’m going to take a chance.’ Then you take a bus, you realize you have nothing, you spend all your money on a crappy car that keeps breaking down, you can’t pay your rent, so you sleep in your car and try to get by as best you can. This is the experience that a lot of people have.”

The series thus includes this famous defecation scene which cuts sharply from the legendary musical theme of Game of Thrones. A very graphic sequence, which caused a lot of talk, but which was totally taken on by the showrunner:

“It was written very early in the script as a ‘hero theme’. We tested several versions, and the one that seemed the most iconic used the main theme from Game of Thrones. Since we didn’t have an opening theme, it felt right to give a taste of it to kick off the series. It all comes from Dunk’s emotional state at that moment, going from hero to the exact opposite of hero, as we all do sometimes.”

There remains this crucial question: is it really Peter Claffey’s butt that we see on the screen? The answer is, once again, clear:

“We don’t have the budget to fake anything on this show. Very, very few things are fake. We’re not crazy. It’s not a fake ass shitting on screen, it’s his ass!”

Class.

Season 2 of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms continues on HBO Max every Monday in France.