‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Stars Talk Meeting George R.R. Martin on Set (VIDEO)
What To Know
- Dexter Sol Ansell and Peter Claffey, who play Egg and Dunk, recount meeting Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin after an accident on the set of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Episode 2.
- The take with the accidental snafu ended up being used in the episode.
- Both stars express excitement about meeting Martin, who praised Ansell’s performance and appeared pleased with the adaptation of his work.
[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Season 1 Episode 2.]
Dexter Sol Ansell met George R.R. Martin at a most inopportune time on the set of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Episode 2, but it makes for a good story. The young star tells TV Insider of his first meeting with the mastermind behind Game of Thrones in the video above. They met while filming the tug of war scene in Season 1 Episode 2, which aired on Sunday, January 25, on HBO, right after he bonked heads with costar Peter Claffey.
Claffey and Ansell play Dunk and Egg in HBO’s adaptation of Martin’s A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms novella trilogy. In Episode 2, the hedge knight and his squire partake in a tug of war during the celebrations at the Ashford tournament. The lively Lyonel Baratheon (Daniel Ings) ropes them into it. Egg takes the front of the line, while Ser Duncan the Tall takes the back. Lyonel takes a break halfway through the contest for a refreshment. When he joins back in, they win, and Dunk throws Egg high up in the air in celebration.
The take used in that throw was the take where Claffey’s nose accidentally bonked Ansell’s eye, the actor reveals in the video above.
“Our team won the tug of war, and Pete, Dunk me kept throwing me up in the air and then catching me. And one time, he threw me so high that my eye hit his nose. So I felt like my eye was inside of my brain. I was just like, ‘Ah!'” Ansell teases. “And then my mom comes on, and she’s like, ‘George is here!’ And then she goes like, ‘Oh! Are you OK?! What happened?’ And then it’s like a thing. And then they actually ended up using that one.”
“They did,” Claffey confirms.
“They cut it off when I was in the air because he threw me so high, but you tell the other bits,” Ansell adds, passing the rest of the story over to his costar.
“Everybody’s gone crazy because of the win, and I immediately knew something was wrong. I was holding you, and you were like, ‘Yeah, no, my eye is fine.’ It was way too late, and Daniel Ings, playing Lyonel Baratheon, is sprinting towards us full tilt and just smashes into us and just smashes you in the back by accident. And I just ran off set. But George was there that day. We both got to meet him. He’s really lovely.”
“He seems super pleased,” Claffey adds of Martin’s impression on set. “I was a massive fan of the original series and stuff, but getting into the whole world, I was like, as long as he’s happy and obviously the fans are happy, and hopefully they are, but as long as he’s happy, it’s his creation. He seems to be really happy, which is great.”
“What was amazing is he literally told me that my acting and how I looked was literally like I jumped off the page, which was very special,” Ansell adds.
Learn more about when Dunk and Egg really started building their friendship, from Claffey and Ansell’s perspectives, in the full video interview above.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Sundays, 10/9c, HBO
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