When you’re applying for a job as a fry cook at McDonald’s, it’s expected that you’ll be told exactly what your job is, who you’ll be working with, and what your hours are expected to be. However, when you audition for a show like HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, which is so hotly-anticipated by rabid fans, you have to accept that details are going to be highly guarded so as to avoid accidentally revealing spoilers.
And so it was with House of the Dragon star Fabien Frankel, who tells entertainment blog The Wrap that when he auditioned for the role of Ser Criston Cole, he had no idea who his character was supposed to even be, having been given a fake name and a set of sides (scene excerpts that an actor is asked to audition from) that aren’t from the show and were most likely written specifically for the audition.
As Frankel told The Wrap:
“I didn’t know anything about it. I just knew the character I was auditioning for was called Ser Clint. And so I was like, ‘Oh, here we go.’ And the scenes — I actually have yet to ask Ryan [Condal] or Miguel [Sapochnik, both Season 1 co-showrunners and executive producers] where that scene came from, whether it was just written by them for the purpose of auditioning, or whether it’s from something else. But yeah, I couldn’t find any indication of [it] existing in any world prior to this audition.”
Frankel was eventually hired to play Ser Criston Cole, whose story takes him from humble knight to adviser–and eventually, antagonist of– the powerful Taergeryan family, and plays the most pivotal role in the fictional history of Westeros.
House of the Dragon can be seen on HBO Max Sundays at 9pm ET.