Dressed in gleaming armor and trudging through mud, a knight swung a medieval weapon called a flail around his head, then tried to crash its spiky ball into a rival’s skull.
Nearby, another knight on horseback charged his steed at an opponent, then smashed his lance into his shield, the impact sending shards of wood skyward and the rival flying from his mount.
On an elevated viewing platform, robed nobles barely glanced at the mayhem below. They weren’t needed for the take, after all.
It was September 2024, in a valley in Northern Ireland, and the combatants were stuntmen filming a scene for “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” the latest addition to HBO’s “Game of Thrones” franchise.
Based on a novella by George R.R. Martin, the show’s first season tells the story of Dunk (Peter Claffey), a 6-foot-6 aspiring knight, and his adventures at a jousting tournament with Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell), his 9-year-old squire.
A major scene in the first season is meant to be this battle in which 14 knights faced off in ferocious combat. It is a setup familiar to any “Game of Thrones” fan, and at first glance, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” appears to have all the hallmarks of a show set in the mythical land of Westeros. Like the original and its prequel, “House of the Dragon,” there are knights and dastardly villains, romance and gore.
But this series, premiering Sunday on HBO and HBO Max, is a different beast. Whereas “Game of Thrones” and “House of the Dragon” are characterized by their vastness and feature world-spanning narratives, dynasties vying for power and digital beasts, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” is the first test of whether the formula will work at a more human scale. (Although, the human scale is relative, given Claffey’s size and a sprawling cast that included up to 400 daily extras.)
The first season is also comparably modest in scope, with only six episodes, most around 30 minutes long. (Filming is already underway on a second.) It focuses on just a few days in Dunk’s life as he buries his mentor, Ser Arlan of Pennytree (Danny Webb), and then claims Ser Arlan had knighted him before his death so he can move up in the world. Dunk is now Ser Duncan the hedge knight, which means he travels the countryside and sleeps under the stars.
On his way to a jousting tournament, Dunk meets Egg, a young boy he takes on as a squire and who turns out to be far wiser than he is. The show, which marries a light comic tone with flashes of fierce violence and tragedy, quickly becomes as much about their relationship as Dunk’s travails.
Ira Parker, who created the show with Martin and serves as the showrunner, called the production “the scrappy upstart of the ‘Game of Thrones’ world.” That was partly because it had a “tight budget” compared with past shows, but also because it doesn’t focus on the ruling classes of Westeros. (Parker was a producer of “House of the Dragon.”)
Dunk is from the bottom of society, Parker said. To rise up in the world he must overcome his own anxieties, including impostor syndrome — at one point viewers see him vomit in fear — as much as his enemies.
“We don’t have dragons,” Parker said. “We just have Dunk.” Will that be enough to draw a wide audience and win over “Thrones” fans accustomed to visual extravagance?
“Who knows?” he said. Martin, his co-creator, is equally resigned to whatever fate the TV gods deliver.
“Long ago I learned that there is no predicting the public,” Martin wrote in an email. “So, all you can do is write the best story you can, and you hope the audience finds it.”
DESPITE ITS DIFFERENCES WITH other shows in the franchise, “Knight” has deep roots.
Martin wrote “The Hedge Knight,” his first novella featuring Dunk and Egg and the basis for the first season, in the late 1990s. (It was originally published in “Legends,” a 1998 anthology of new work by famous science fiction and fantasy authors, which also included novellas by Stephen King and Ursula K. Le Guin).
Martin continued Dunk and Egg’s adventures in two additional novellas, “The Sworn Sword” (2003) — the basis for the show’s second season — and “The Mystery Knight” (2010), and hopes to keep writing about these “fun characters.”
“I have another dozen Dunk and Egg stories I need to write in my copious spare time,” he said. (These would presumably come after he finishes the long-delayed next installment of “A Song of Ice and Fire” series, the basis for “Game of Thrones.”)
As far back as 2014, Martin said on his blog that he wanted to turn the Dunk and Egg books into movies or a TV show. Yet in 2022, when HBO asked Parker to write a script, he was told by a Martin representative that the author had lost interest in the idea.
“They said, ‘Look, George doesn’t want to do this, so it’s your job to convince him,’” Parker recalled. So Parker promised Martin he “would never include anything” in the show unless the author approved. (Martin did not respond to a question about why he hadn’t wanted the show made.)
Keeping Martin happy was essential to producing the show, and so was finding the right actors to play Dunk and Egg.
Sarah Bradshaw, an executive producer, said some on the creative team doubted they would ever find someone who had the physical stature to play Dunk and who could also act. The production team contacted more than 150 basketball, rowing and volleyball clubs, and saw actors from across Europe and the United States. Ultimately it was an Irish former rugby player, the 6-foot-6, 246-pound Claffey, who stood out.
Claffey, 29, said in an interview in his on-set trailer that he devoted his life to rugby as a teenager and was good enough to play for a national youth team in Ireland. But in his early 20s, he realized he wouldn’t make it as a professional and auditioned for an acting school in Dublin, which he then attended. He went on to land small roles in several shows including Netflix’s “Vikings: Valhalla.” Still, he said, he struggled with the idea of playing a leading man.
“I was just so worried about my anxiety ruining it for me,” he said, adding that therapy and medication had helped.
On set, Claffey didn’t seem like he was struggling with any fears. At one point, he filmed an ale-tent scene with Ansell, as Egg, in which he tried to explain to his young friend the meaning of a sexually explicit drinking song. Between takes, Claffey gave the younger actor brotherly encouragement.
“Hang on, buddy,” he said at one point. “Get in the zone here. You’ve got this” Claffey said the pair had become friends and had gone bowling and to arcades together.
Ansell, 11, had appeared in a British soap opera and several movies before this role. In a video interview, he said he hadn’t known he was auditioning for a “Game of Thrones” show; he was asked to read from the script for the British rom-com “About a Boy,” another tale about a lad far wiser than his adult mentor.
When Ansell learned the audition was for a “Thrones” show, family members who were fans told him, “You have to get this.” But they never let him watch the hyper-violent original.
The biggest challenge of playing Egg, Ansell said, wasn’t adapting to the Thrones universe, but shaving off his blond hair. (Egg is bald throughout the show.) And because of the typical secrecy around a “Thrones” series, he couldn’t even tell his school friends in Yorkshire, England, why he did it. Though he wasn’t sure they’d be impressed anyway.
“They just care about who won the last football match,” he said.
“KNIGHT” IS ULTIMATELY ABOUT a man yearning for self-respect and the respect of his countrymen, about the relationships between warriors and their protégés, about the meaning of valor. But it also has its share of “Game of Thrones” spectacle, notably in the jousting scenes and the seven-on-seven battle.
On set, the fickle Northern Irish weather wasn’t cooperating, threatening to make the clash look insufficiently brutal.
“Oh God, the sun’s out again,” Bradshaw said, looking skyward. “Keeping the battlefield a mud bath has been a thing.” Soon, several firefighters carrying hoses raced onto the set and deluged the soil with water as six other crew members used pitchforks and spades to churn up the ground.
Other challenges included swarms of wasps, drawn by the sugar in the abundant fake blood. Bradshaw carried an EpiPen because of her allergies, she said.
If the horses, armor and broad, muddy battlefield were common “Thrones” components, less so was the tight perspective that placed all of the above in service to Dunk’s specific hero’s journey. To help achieve that, the team filmed chunks of the battle from his point of view, using cameras with a visor over them to make the viewer feel as if they were him — at moments confused, attacked, desperate.
“I wanted people to feel what it’s like to be strapped inside armor and a helmet,” Parker said. “It’s not like you going out with your buddies and playing with some wooden swords. In a real battle you’re immediately losing all your vision — you can’t hear anything, you’re sweating, your heart rate goes up immediately.”
(Tom McCullagh, the production designer, said he was told to make the fights “like something that we’ve never seen before” on TV: “So no pressure there.”)
For viewers to care about Dunk’s struggle for honor and legitimacy, they have to follow his point of view at all times, especially when he is fighting for his life. As they do, Parker said, he hopes they will realize the show itself is a lot like Dunk.
Both are “earthy, unpolished” and filled with heart, he said. There may be no dragons onscreen, but hopefully that is enough.
Alex Marshall is a Times reporter covering European culture. He is based in London.
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