Inside The ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 3 Set With Emma D’Arcy | Set Tour | Architectural Digest

Hello AD, I'm Emma Darcy and I play Rhaenyra Targaryen in HBO's House of the Dragon. When I first got to the Red Keep set, I think, I mean the first thing I think we were all struck by was the scale. The Red Keep does exist, there is a castle in a soundstage in Watford and what Jim has created is something that's topographically accurate, you know, all the things are in the right places. You're used to as an actor that this bedroom would be on one stage and then the connecting corridor would be somewhere else and you're always sort of gluing little pieces together but here you can learn the geography of the castle and it's allowed us to do some really playful things over the years. People might remember in series one where Rhaenyra gives birth in a room downstairs and she makes a really, really long journey up the grand staircase to what were Alicent's chambers and we could do all of that for real, all of that happens in camera. Big like, you know, 10 minute long takes. That was a gift that Jim gave to us, us the cast and us the creative team. This is such an incredible space, in fact all of the sets in the show are remarkable and we are incredibly lucky to have Jim Clay's genius bringing this world to life. Hi, my name is Jim Clay and I am production designer for House of the Dragon. Wow, how did it feel being given the job of designer on House of the Dragon? I think to begin with it was enormously daunting because I was very aware we were stepping into some very, very big shoes following the success of Game of Thrones. You know, at the same time it was exhilarating. When I discussed it originally with Ryan Condal, our showrunner, the aim was to make the audience feel comfortable, that they were familiar with some of the places, that they felt a little bit as if they were in the same show and then to gradually make it our own show and I think the approach we took was to embrace and expand and gradually we built our own world and it became House of the Dragon. A lot of my job is to create domains which reflect the psychological climate of the narrative and the narrative of this show often is quite dark. I hope the actors feel that when they step onto the set they're entering an immersive world, they're surrounded four walls and full ceilings, so if I can give them a complete composite immersive world my hope is that that helps their job. This is newly Rhaenyra's chambers. They were formerly her father's. This I think is a big psychic obstacle. Her father's bed is sort of, I don't know, the phantasm of the season. Viserys died in it. This was his sickbay for a lot of the end of season one. I think for Rhaenyra, from it looms a kind of, well, the shadow of his tenure I think. I'm really fond actually of this desk. I mean it's a hangover from when the space belonged to Viserys and then subsequently to Aegon, though we don't talk about that. This is a sort of domain of leadership that Rhaenyra is actually able to kind of inhabit and I think there's like a gendered element because being in this setting as a woman and having a desk to work at I think is quite significant. You know, it's a private object that speaks to one's intellect as opposed to, you know, one's ornamental value, you say. And so I think to have a desk of one's own is, yeah, quite a powerful thing. But if you spend time, as we do obviously, on these sets, you just, I mean look, even here, so these will be messages that have come via Raven and these are not necessarily working props, like we haven't had action in which this plays, but the thought that goes into all of the dressing is so sublime, very special. So obviously the dimensions of these rooms are really large, like they're supposed to have a kind of operatic scale, the sort of Byzantine influence in Viserys rooms particularly, the kind of high vaulted ceilings, the cross-shaped floor plan, and within that the sort of scale of everything is scaled up so that you can get, you know, people and equipment in the corners. If you're shooting scenes in here for day, it's obviously all daylight and so you have this beautiful filtered light, not only through the screens but also through the like sheer fabrics that are hung in all of the windows. And when you're shooting for night, everything's obviously candlelit or firelit and that's mostly practical, so most things in here will be on fire at some point. You're rarely shooting a scene in House of the Dragon without a roaring fire at your back, so the fireplace would have a roaring fire in it, sconces on all the walls, and I think it gives the show, I suppose, a very specific look. This is the model that Viserys spent a kind of lifetime working on. It's a model of the seat of old Valyria. It's gone through a lot because it got completely smashed up by Aegon, but the pieces I think are so beautiful. I mean, it's the same with everything in the show. I think this production really celebrates craftsmanship and things made by human hands, and so all of this has been sculpted. It's nice, I think, for Viserys. It was maybe a reminder that even great dynasties fall, and so it's sort of you build something to humble you. I think it's interesting that Rhaenyra brings the object back. A reminder to him, I think, even great dynasties fall. I wonder if she's seeking the same lesson. We very much used Game of Thrones as the starting point and the reference for the throne room and for the throne, but in the style of embracing and expanding, we played with the proportions a little bit and we extended the throne itself. The throne room is probably one of the most iconic buildings we inherited from Game of Thrones. We wanted to preserve the feeling and the familiarity of the throne room for the audience, but one of the briefs I had from Ryan was that he wanted to introduce statues into the throne room of previous kings, and those had to be arranged in a corridor, in a column, so that they were constantly looking down on the person who was occupying the throne at the time. So we went through various design processes, but we always ended up with this sort of forest of columns, and that was starting to interrupt the sort of shots we wanted to take. So I had this idea that we would combine the statues with the columns, and that's how we proceeded. And then because the statues were also part of the structural column, symbolically they were holding up the legend and the history of the Red Keep, and in particular the throne room. So this is the grand staircase, which is the central hub of the Red Keep, and it's the main circulation area. And to be honest, the biggest design element of these stairs was the depth of the stair and the height of the stair, so that people can walk up and down this safely and elegantly whilst talking. The atmosphere is fraught. I think it's best you do not stray again. And we can take a journey this way through to the courtyard, which serves again as the main entrance into the interior of the Red Keep, and it allows daylight to come in from the ceiling above. From the balcony here, this is where young Rhaenyra chose her protector, Mr Kristen Cole. You're welcome, Sir Kristen. We've built a huge bonfire in here, which is great when Rhaenyra takes over the castle again. So to show that, we've had all sorts of fabrics being thrown down over the balcony, and they all sort of accumulate here in a beautifully dressed but untidy pile, and then eventually that'll go off and there'll be set fire to. It's quite magnificent that you've got the height, you've got the two floors, it's something that's quite unusual when you're building a set. I think the design of this was about getting the proportions of these arches, so they reflected the reality of these sort of places, and then that determined the height of the outer staircase, because we had to land on the corridor above here, and that gave us 14 steps with a big landing, and then another 14 steps. 14 steps being about the maximum you can ask anybody to walk up and down elegantly. As we walk down the corridors, we've embellished these frameworks here with some really lovely tin tiles to give a little bit of extra depth and texture, because originally in Season 1 we had some erotic art, and because of the changes of Rhaen, and when Alicent was here, she was disgusted by all of that. She became more puritanical in the decor of the whole Red Keep, didn't she? So she stripped it of all of that, and so when we came back in for Rhaenyra, we decided that we would put something else within those frameworks to give it a bit more depth and tones within the stone walls. We're now entering a new set of chambers, which began its life in Season 1 actually as the young Rhaenyra's chambers. This is where young Rhaenyra escaped the Red Keep to take a night out on the town with her uncle Daemon, and then this is the panel which opened and led her to the secret staircase, which took her out onto the exterior of the Red Keep. This is also the room where Alicent had her secret affair, isn't it? It was Christian Cole, and we introduced these almost as a confessional element to it, because they had their nights together and then filled with remorse and regret, and so these served to give that atmosphere of confessional, and they're also fabulous things to shoot through, and also reflected in the window shutters, where we get all this beautiful dappled light coming in, which gives the warmth to the room. And we've only used really light linens on the windows, because the fretwork is so beautiful that when it's lit, it really gives a warm, patterned texture to the floor, which is really lovely. Where is my gold? Your gold? And this is the council chamber of the Red Keep. It's probably one of the most important areas of the Red Keep, and certainly the most filmed, I think. The influences were kind of Romanesque architecture, and in particular, I'd looked a lot at St. Bartholomew's Church in London, and taken reference from these enormous columns and these huge arches as sort of a powerful room that we're in, with all the important decisions of state which are taken here. We've seen some quite amazing scenes in here. This is where King Viserius admonished his brother Daemon when he was misbehaving with the gold cloaks, and then poor old Master of the Coin, played by Bill Patterson, was murdered in this very seat here. This is the dominant window, so we look in that direction a lot of the time, and outside there is this amazing back cloth painted by a hugely talented man called Steve Mitchell, who painted this thing single-handedly, and it serves as a view across Blackwater Bay. Because we started in here and created the world of the dragons in season one, I was allowed to be influenced by dragons at some point within the Red Keep, so I started with some of the lighting that I introduced with the dragons, and within the sculpture of the torches, and then went with the valerian colours of the steel, which work really well within this environment. And then I moved on to the table and the chairs, and I was inspired obviously by the architecture and the beautiful curves, which you can see as you look through the backs of the chairs, and you can look through the base of the table. It's very much in keeping with that shape, and I think it really complements it, especially when you get some lovely shots that are really low and the lighting's beautiful through the windows. I really, really do like this table. I mean, it wasn't the one that we initially made at season one. After watching the series, we then realised that it looked a little bit flat, so we decided that when we came back to do season two, we'd put a lot more texture into it and get that depth in there, so that when you actually shoot it, you can see that it almost looks like a stone top, and then we embellished it with the lovely valerian steel corners as well, so I think it looks a lot stronger, a lot sturdier, and a heavier piece of furniture that goes really well with the chairs. We had a lot of discussion, didn't we, about the shape of it, so that the dominant end, the biggest end was the king's, and then we could take shots from the king's point of view, and all the characters were narrowing in towards the end, so we could see them clearly. And then I had this idea that I wanted to do some really grand chandeliers and have them lit with flames, so I wanted to do a lot of flame in this project, because the candlelight is great, but also because there's so much fire, blood and fire, it's really good to have it within the lighting in the set. There are so many battles being planned throughout the story that we brought this in to plot the route of Kristen Colwood. So this is Westeros, and this is the journey that they go through, the stormlands, the west, the crowdlands, the riverlands, and there's little magnetic discs that we can place on here when it's in action. This war will not be won with dragons alone, but with dragons flying behind armies of men. These sets are obviously incredibly detailed, and you sort of see that at every level. You only have to look at surfaces to notice that every object has a degree of accuracy and craftsmanship that just lends like a real depth, I think, to the work, certainly to one's experience as an actor, like occupying the space. But something that I think is really nice about working on a show over a number of years like this one is that, you know, this huge building stays up, so it has been standing for, I think, going on four years now, which means that it has its own history. And so, you know, the crew, the cast, the production team have occupied these spaces, and I was really struck coming back here that I have memories in these rooms. That brings so much texture and kind of emotional material to the work, I think. The air is thick with ghosts. Thanks for joining us, AD. It's been great having you here at the Red Keep. Until next time, bye.