Behind the scenes of House of the Dragon’s Blood and Cheese
The actors behind Blood and Cheese on 'House of the Dragon' season 2 exclusively break their silence on their secret roles and the hard-to-watch scene they shot for the premiere. https://t.co/YTQQLRsY4J
- Entertainment Weekly (@EW) June 17, 2024
Entertainment Weekly talked to Sam C. Wilson (a.k.a. Blood), Mark Stobbart (a.k.a. Cheese), and co-creator Ryan Condal about last night’s episode.
Wilson and Stobbart’s canine co-star was known for playing Cruella’s dog in her live action film. They thought it was funny how he was more famous than either of them, with Stobbart joking “We were nothing compared to this dog.”
Condal says "We wanted it to play a bit as a dark Cohen Brothers heist sequence that takes a terrible twist at the end of it."
Stobbart recalls the auditions asking for “decent comedy chops,” with Wilson stating “I remember auditioning for it with more of a twinkle than what ended up being on screen. From the bits I've seen, it's a lot darker than the job that we accepted."
On their characters, Wilson says “It was always about losing control and then being in a position where we have no choice but to do what we set out to do because there was no escape. It ends up being a crime of incompetence on the show, and I think that's where it differentiates from the book. It ends up being two utterly incompetent hitmen."
Condal also talked about some of the differences from the scene in the book.
[Book detail.]In the book Blood and Cheese force Helaena to choose between Jaehaerys and her younger son Maelor. When she ultimately chooses Maelor they kill Jaehaerys instead. In the show Jaehaerys is her only son.
Condal explains "Maelor does not yet exist on this timeline because 30 years is compressed into 20 years.”
The horror of the scene was also toned down because of how young the child actors were. "We knew that we would be challenged to get performances out of children that young - as a person who has kids around these ages, I'm intimately familiar with all of that. Then there are things that you can and cannot expose children to on a movie set."