'House of the Dragon': Paddy Considine opens up about Viserys' 'complicated' character
Ardent ‘GoT’ fans are counting the days remaining for the highly anticipated prequel series ‘Game of Thrones: House of the Dragon’ to premiere globally on HBO Max. In an interview, the noted actor Paddy Considine addressed what exactly makes his character of King Viserys Targaryen ‘complicated’ in nature.
In an interview with Screenrant dated August 8, actor Paddy Considine opened up on his preparation and approach to essaying King Viserys Targaryen on screen and also how his character is not an easy one with a focus on his wife’s death and son’s loss in the series that changes him completely into a different kind of person who realizes he can’t please everyone.
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Opening up on how his character of Viserys is really complicated within the series, Considine said, “Yeah, I know what you mean. It's funny, really, because Ned Stark - what Sean Bean did - was sort of in my head when I played this, which is kind of weird. It was part of the makeup for me of Viserys.”
Giving some more insight into his character Viserys, Considine said, “He's not a simple man, Viserys. And I think it's the situations around him that create complications for him. But I think he's a deeply tragic man, in that he's just trying to always do the right thing. It's almost like everything in his life has gone really, really well—and there's almost a naivety to him. He's a peacetime king; he very much loves inheriting that from Jaehaerys, and he's a good student of old Valyria and all these things. His temperament is good— he's almost like a perfect king. And then I think he starts to spiral when those tragic events transpire.”
Revealing the painful events which make Viserys a complex person in the series, Considine responded, “He loses his wife Aemma and his son—he's lost sons in the past, but he loses Aemma—and that's the big devastation. He loses her and then loses Baelon. That's the thing that starts his psychological spiral, if you like. But I think all Viserys ever wanted to do was make the right decision, and you can't do that. You can't please everybody, as a ruler—you can't please everybody as a person, but especially as a ruler. And I think he suffers in that people think his kindness is weakness.”
Finally dishing out some interesting facts about his character of King Viserys in the prequel series, Considine said, “What I found really interesting about him was that he wasn't a king who was hungry for power; he's not a tyrant. He's just someone who genuinely wants to serve the people as best as he can, but that world just will not allow for it. So, there are lots of different conflicts. His hand is forced in many different ways to make decisions, and they're not always the right ones.”
‘House of the Dragon’ will release globally on August 21, 2022, on HBO Max. The show has been adapted from author George R R Martin’s ‘Fire & Blood.’ Set almost two centuries before the events of ‘Game of Thrones,’ the series revolves around how there’s bound to be a nasty and blood-filled war for the throne once King Viserys officially announces his only daughter Rhaenyra as his successor instead of his brother Daemon which would change the loyalties that will be tested alongside the jealousies which would play out in the traditional Westeros world full of patriarchy.