Matt Smith on ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2, Playing a ‘Weaker’ Demon

In “House of the Dragon,” HBO’s fantasy epic set two centuries before “Game of Thrones,” Matt Smith plays Daemon, a warrior prince who exists among fire-breathing reptiles and palace intrigue. But if his character were to ever delve deeper into the supernatural, Smith has some ideas about the direction he might take. “I think Daemon would make a very good vampire,” he said. “I can imagine him wandering the earth alone for all eternity.”

He certainly has the color: pale and platinum blonde, Daemon looks like he could have arrived in the dark, forbidden world of Westeros from Transylvania. But he may be too hot-blooded to play the vampire. And “House of the Dragon” — a prequel to the earth-shattering, Emmy-engulfing hit “Game of Thrones,” set during the reign of the incestuous Targaryen dynasty — is unlikely to veer into creature horror.

But it’s easy to see what Smith, the English actor who appeared in the series’ August 2022 premiere as the best-known member of the “House of the Dragon” ensemble, means. Daemon is close to power, but he is – vampirically – too thirsty, too isolated, too much of the night to truly rule. “He would probably make a very bad king,” Smith said.

As the series enters its second season, premiering June 16, the question of Daemon’s future — as king or as a lonely wanderer — remains unresolved. The first season played out in its setup: Daemon marries his niece, Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy), to help secure his claim to the Iron Throne, but when his father and Daemon’s older brother, King Viserys (Paddy Considine), dies, Rhaenyra rivals within the family seize power. Now the two are mourning the loss of their son while waging a complex vendetta – and Daemon sets off alone, to settle scores and rally troops for the coming war.

“You never really know which way it’s going to go,” Smith said during a recent lunch in New York. “I always thought of him as an agent of chaos.” This isn’t the first time Smith has added a bold touch of uncertainty to a familiar property. In 2009, when he was 26, Smith was announced as the youngest Doctor ever in the iconic British science fiction series “Doctor Who” and – despite the risk of discouraging devotees of the previous Doctor, the phenomenally popular David Tennant – won over fans. “I was walking down the street and people were like, ‘Don’t break Doctor Who!'” Smith says. “Because they had no idea who I was.” He had considered turning down the role: “Briefly. But my agent, very quickly, said to me, “You do it. ” Thank God.”

Once the world knew him, he created the character of Prince Philip in 2016 opposite Claire Foy’s Queen Elizabeth II in “The Crown,” in an Emmy-nominated turn. And now, “House of the Dragon” – the sequel to HBO’s landmark series – has taken it to new heights. The series, with technically complex and arduous filming in the United Kingdom, is (along with “The Last of Us” and “The White Lotus”) one of the most important arrows in HBO’s quiver, now that “Succession” is finished and “Euphoria”. remains in a perpetual blur. Its first episode was the largest debut for an original series in HBO history and the largest launch on the streaming service then called HBO Max; between linear and streaming, the series averaged 29 million viewers per episode, a total that perhaps only the melodrama of Westeros can muster in an era of fractured audience attention.

In other words, Smith is the antihero of the greatest show on television. And, as with an actor who spends his workdays playing the ultimate power game, he is acutely aware of his own position in the world. He casually remarks that he recently re-watched “Point Break” and dreams of meeting Keanu Reeves: “People are either movie stars or actors, you know? And she’s an amazing fucking movie star. As for where Smith himself fits into that divide, he dreams of a career like that of Gary Oldman or Joaquin Phoenix. “But you’ll never have a career like that,” he says. For a moment, it’s as if he’s talking to himself. “Because someone always gets those coins before you.”

Which makes “House of the Dragon” an interesting test. Daemon provides an end-to-end showcase – drawing on Smith’s full-fledged charisma and familiar intellectual property. After “Game of Thrones” ended in 2019, at the height of a Peak TV moment that began its decline, Smith initially felt ambivalent about “House of the Dragon,” fearing that the series could never match anything that came before it. “The audience has changed,” Smith says. “The way television is consumed has changed. We can see a market becoming saturated, enveloped and becoming obsolete.

During his first Zoom with series creators Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik, Smith made his concerns clear. “What concerns me is that we’ve seen this story told,” he said. “That’s the first thing I said.” In other words, it took an agent of chaos to make it new.

In a black Saint Laurent sweatshirt, gesturing with fries quivering under the weight of dollops of mayonnaise, Smith is an animated conversationalist. But, as he listens, he lowers his eyebrow, giving you the full weight of his penetrating gaze and his architectural cheekbones. He knows his angles; he is one blonde and white wig away from the mischievous and convincing demon.

“He has one of those timeless faces,” says director Edgar Wright, who cast Smith as a villainous ’60s swinging lothario in the 2021 film “Last Night in Soho.” “He is incredibly charming and handsome in person. And yet, he does not hesitate to oppose it.

In “House of the Dragon,” this friction between seduction and aggression fits perfectly: it is a universe in which sex and power are hopelessly linked. The series is based on sections of “Fire & Blood,” a 2018 book about the history of Westeros by George RR Martin, whose novels became “Game of Thrones.” And its central Targaryen family, whose various members have dueling claims to sovereignty, finally reaches the end of the line with Daenerys, the “Game of Thrones” character played by Emilia Clarke. She closes the show by seizing power, becoming a dictator, and meeting an untimely demise.

Fans revolted at this series’ endgame, and HBO’s immediate attempts to create a spinoff got off to a disheartening start. The network shot a pilot for a spinoff series called “Bloodmoon” — starring Naomi Watts and costing $30 million — before killing it. Then Sapochnik, a former “Game of Thrones” director, and Condal, a veteran screenwriter (his credits include the Dwayne Johnson vehicles “Hercules” and “Rampage”), teamed up for a series about the Targaryens, a series which had obvious pressure. sure it’s done well. Smith’s name and face were on Condal’s mind as a potential star.

Condal says, “It was one of those rare cases where an actor’s head is on the writers’ board.”

That was in 2019. Finally, in 2020, Smith and the creators met in person — a challenge in the pre-COVID vaccine era. “We had to do two weeks of preparation just to get in the room with the guy,” Condal says. “And he was dazzling.”

“We had to convince each other,” Smith says. He got the role, but his apprehension about the project persisted. “Given its scale, there was a real worry: Will the public want it? »

The answer was a resounding yes. Among “House of the Dragon’s” many other triumphs, including an Emmy nomination for best drama in 2023: It demolished “Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” which debuted on Amazon Prime Video , in perfect harmony with “House of the Dragon”. » – this after Amazon bought the rights to JRR Tolkien’s novel series for around $250 million. But as the season progressed, some critics came to think that the show’s breakneck pace — with multiple major time jumps and lots of exposition — worked less well than “Game of Thrones.” , more granular. We first meet the heroine Rhaenyra when she was a child and had a special bond with her uncle; we close the season with her as an adult, married to him. Only in Westeros!

“We had to cover 20 years,” says Condal. (He speaks via Zoom from London, where he’s telling the story of Season 3 while finishing post-production on Season 2.) “Rhaenyra had to grow up and have children, and those children had to grow up to age to fight for the war to start This kicks off the first season, with one of Rhaenyra’s heirs devoured by a dragon belonging to a son of Rhaenyra’s rival, Alicent (Olivia Cooke). Condal promises that the action in the new season will begin “a few days after the events of season 1 – all the wounds are fresh” and that it will unfold in a more methodical manner (Methodical doesn’t mean boring, though: the series loses none of its willingness to indulge in violence or count deaths.) “I think the pacing will be more like a build-up,” Condal says. “Season 1 was dizzying because you were jumping around. periods, while season 2 feels like lighting a fuse in episode 1 and watching it go off – and at certain points, little charges go off.”

There is no doubt that several of these charges will be triggered by Daemon: after spending the second half of the first season playing a role in helping his…