Steffan Hill

‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Creator on George R. R. Martin’s Plans for 15 More Books and That Gross Poop Shot in the Premiere: ‘It’s Not a Fake Up There S—-ing on Screen. That’s His Butt’

19 Jan 2026, 03:45 by Jordan Moreau · Variety

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for the premiere of “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” now streaming on HBO Max.

Westeros is not ready for “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.”

The new “Game of Thrones” prequel, which takes place about 100 years before the main series and 80 years after “House of the Dragon,” leaves the dragons and politics behind and instead focuses on one oafish knight, Peter Claffey’s Ser Duncan the Tall, aka Dunk, and his diminutive squire named Egg, played by nine-year-old Dexter Sol Ansell.

“A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” is less about Targaryens and Starks and more about Dunk’s personal journey to becoming a knight while at a tourney with some of the fiercest warriors in Westeros. It’s based “A Song of Ice and Fire” author George R. R. Martin’s novella, “The Hedge Knight,” published in 1998, and there are two more books that could form the groundworks for Season 2, which was announced ahead of the show’s premiere, and beyond. Each installment in the six-episode Season 1 is less than an hour long and packs in more jokes and cutaway gags than any single episode of “Thrones” or “House of the Dragon.”

The series starts with Dunk mourning the death of his mentor and elderly knight, Ser Arlan of Pennytree (Danny Webb). After saying his goodbyes, Dunk picks up Arlan’s sword in the shining sun and has a hero moment worthy of Jon Snow or Jaime Lannister — but then gets a queasy stomach and explosively poops behind a tree.

Going quickly from hero to zero, Dunk journeys to the tourney to prove himself as a real knight. Along the way, he meets a little bald boy named Egg who secretly follows him and convinces the would-be knight he should be his squire. Resigned to sleeping outside, Dunk also manages to sneak into a party held by the rowdy Ser Lyonel Baratheon (Daniel Ings) to scrape together some food and catches the eye of a cute puppeteer named Tanselle (Tanzyn Crawford).

With Variety, showrunner Ira Parker, who was a co-executive producer on “House of the Dragon,” breaks down the premiere, that poop joke and how much of George R. R. Martin’s unpublished source material he has access to for the show’s future.

HBO

I love that this show is still set in Westeros and has a similar feel as “Game of Thrones,” but there are poop jokes and cutaway gags. How did you strike that tone?

Really it all just came from Dunk’s POV. We wanted the audience to feel whatever he was feeling in that moment. One of the first jokes that we do is Dunk feeling like a hero. He picks up this sword of his old master, and he thinks, “Maybe I could be the guy. Maybe I can be a knight.” But, of course, he’s not a hero. None of us are really heroes. Then all of a sudden, he gets a stomachache and he shits because he hears that music and the call, but he’s not quite there yet. But he decides he’s gonna try and go anyway. I feel like that’s how so many decisions in my life were made, which is having these grand thoughts and dreams and then the reality of it sets in and it becomes a lot more complicated.

Dunk’s journey in Season 1 is no different than somebody going out to New York or L.A. from their little hometown, thinking “I’m gonna go and try and make it.” Then you end up taking a bus there, realizing you have nothing, spending all your money on some shitty car that breaks down all the time, and you can’t afford rent, so you’re sleeping in your car and you’re going to auditions and trying to make it work. This is the experience that a lot of people have, whether you’re going into the arts or if you’re going into anything that is highly competitive like knighting can be. Dunk finds himself at the very bottom of this. He doesn’t have the training, the name, the money, he can’t afford to fail.

I have to ask about the pooping scene with the iconic “Game of Thrones” theme song. Where did that come from?

It was written in the script very early on as the hero theme. We tried a bunch of different versions, and the one that felt the most iconic was the major theme. Because we were not going with an opening title sequence, it felt right to give everybody a little bit of a taste of it to launch into our show. It comes out of how Dunk is feeling in that moment, going from hero to the opposite of hero, as so many of us do sometimes.

How did that work? Is that actually Peter Claffey’s butt or did you use a fake one?

A magician never gives it away. I will say that we don’t have the budget for fake anything on this show. Very, very little is done fake. We’re not crazy. It’s not a fake up there shitting on screen, that’s his butt.

It wouldn’t be Westeros without dragons, and even though there aren’t any real dragons left, you still have a fake one in the episode. Did you purposely want to have some sort of dragon representation in the show, and how did you make that puppet?

We were trying to figure out how to “Game of Thrones” this puppet show. The idea that these were real artisans and craftsmen, this traveling puppet show with these massive, moving puppets was very interesting to us early on. The puppet makers did a fantastic job. It felt impressive enough, and the goal was to disconcert Dunk and send him into this puppet show and for him to be just blown away and almost intimidated. He can’t escape the fact that he feels insignificant to this world where everyone’s doing these wonderful things, and he’s just wondering if he belongs there. Even the fire was done in a way that theoretically could have been done back in the 14th century. The dust that is being caught on fire is called Lycopodium, which is a dried pollen that theoretically could have actually been collected and ignited with a torch. So no special effects for us. We tried to keep it grounded.

Dexter Sol Ansell was 9 years old when he filmed Season 1, as you get into Season 2 and beyond are you worried at all about him aging out of the role, like how the “Stranger Things” kids got so much older by the end of their show?

Dexter is going to have whatever career he decides that he wants. He’s so talented. He’s come in Season 2 like an old pro. He’s so confident, calm, and he can give you different versions now. He’s really come into himself. I think he’s the best child actor on Earth, there’s no doubt about it. The planned books that George has take Dunk and Egg through their whole lives. I’ve joked about this with HBO, to which I’ve definitely got some eye rolls, but I would love to do three, four or five seasons with Egg the boy and then come back in five or 10 years and do a few more with Egg the prince. Then come back in five or 10 years from then and do him at the end of his life — Linklater method. They go off, do whatever they want to do in between, they can have lives, then we come back and get the crew back together and we tell a little bit more of the story because I think it would be really interesting. The idea of taking two people on a journey through their lives, I haven’t seen a lot of that. But I embrace the oldening of Dexter and Egg. He’ll grow older with the character; he’s supposed to get older. Hopefully, it’s not all based on him having a cute, high voice. We understand how important that is right now, but hopefully he will develop and the characters will develop, and it will still be a lot of fun.

How much of George R. R. Martin’s unpublished novels do you have access to? Do you have the details of stories that he hasn’t written yet?

I do. There’s a document that few people have read. He works all offline. His computer is not connected to the internet, so things have to be printed out and passed around that way. I’ve seen the plan for 12, 13, 14, 15, maybe, of these novellas. It would be fantastic, but I don’t want to get carried away here. Let’s see if people watch the show. Maybe we’re just one, one and a half, two and done and we all go home, but it’s a lot of fun to write in this world so I hope we get to do more.