Australian Penthouse

CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR WINNERS!
H. Schafer, Carlisle, WA
G. Parry, Redlynch QLD
E. Macey, Kurralta Park SA
R. Berry, Grovedale VIC
A. Davidson, Narre Warren VIC

To celebrate the release of Game of Thrones the Complete First Season on Blu-ray and DVD, we are giving you the chance to win a copy! Thanks to Warner Home Video and HBO Home Entertainment, Australian Penthouse is offering 5 readers the chance to win a copy of Game of Thrones the Complete First Season, valued at $59.95 RRP each.

DIRECTOR: Various
STARS: Sean Bean, Lena Headey, Peter Dinklage, Iain Glen, Jason Momoa
Warner Home Video/HBO Home Entertainment

THE MOVIE
Game of Thrones is “tantalizing” (Los Angeles Times), “excellent” (The Hollywood Reporter) and an “HBO Triumph” (Boston Globe) that won two 2011 Emmy® awards including Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (Peter Dinklage). The drama follows kings and queens, knights and renegades, liars and noblemen as they vie for power in a land where summers span decades and winters can last a lifetime. Two powerful families are engaged in a deadly cat-and-mouse game     control of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. As betrayal, lust, intrigue and supernatural forces shake the four corners of the Kingdoms, their bloody struggle for the Iron Throne will have unforeseen and far-reaching consequences.

THE PRIZE
5 x Game of Thrones the Complete First Season DVDs ($59.95 RRP each, total prize value $299.75).

THE INTERVIEW
Check out our exclusive interview with Harry Lloyd who plays Viserys Targaryen, a crown-hungry exile with a right to the throne, in Game of Thrones.

Tell us about your character.
I play Viserys Targaryen who is also called the Beggar King because his father, the Mad King, Aerys II, was killed by all the people that we love in this show like Sean Bean and Mark Addy. So I’ve lived my life in exile – the whole of my family was killed in the civil war and I am trying to get back and reclaim the throne which is rightfully mine.

Me and my sister Daenerys are the last two people left of our family which is a dynasty that ruled over the Seven Kingdoms for 500 years or more. So I’m quite an uptight, repressed, frustrated little guy who can’t ever get what he wants.

In the first few episodes he comes across as just nasty. Is there more to him than that?
Yeah. Even in those first two, the only reason I think it comes across that way is because we don’t fully understand why he’s behaving like that or how important this throne is or what has happened to him. What’s great about this series is he does get his own voice a little bit. We do see some more sympathetic scenes – and scenes without his sister which is crucial. We see where he’s coming from and actually how he has brought her up her whole life and how he has in some ways done a brilliant job already, just for them both to be alive.

Tell us about his relationship with his sister.
Well the first thing you need to know is that traditionally Targaryens always married brother to sister because other people weren’t good enough, ultimately. You can tell there’s something definitely sexual between them. And so though he sells her off to be married to someone else [Khal Drogo] just so he can use his Dothraki army, actually he finds it harder and harder to accept that she doesn’t belong to him anymore – and he is actually crueller to her because of that even though it was his idea. So the relationship goes through an interesting change as the series progresses.

It sounds as if you’re very on top of the mythology. Did you immerse yourself in the books?
Yeah. I think you’ve got to collect all the information that’s there for you. I read the first book and then I spoke to Bryan Cogman who is Dan [Weiss] and David’s [Benioff] assistant who was kind of resident geek – he just knows the books inside out. I spoke to him about different sections of the next few books and where I can find out more about my history and more about places I might have visited. Certain chapters are really useful at just fleshing out my universe. I started out just curious but I got really into it and I became a bit of a fan. I’m still staggered by the scale of them.

How did you come to be cast?
It was all fairly straightforward to be honest. I got sent a few pages – not even a whole script – back in about March 2009 for this new HBO TV show. I didn’t know anything about it. I was just aware that in this scene I was playing someone rather unpleasant. So I made a tape and it’s one of those auditions you never expect to hear back from because you think the world and his wife goes up for these parts. Then I was told the producers and writers wanted to see me again when they came back to England, and I read the whole script and just thought it was brilliant. I did a more uptight version of what I did in the original tape for the guys and then I just got a call a few weeks after that.

What was your initial response to the idea of being in an epic fantasy?
I never thought it would be tacky fantasy. The fantasy thing wasn’t as interesting to me as the HBO thing. I just thought, well, those guys make stuff with quite a lot of detail and they don’t mess around so if you’re going to make a fantasy and if I’m going to do one then I’d like to do it with them.

How did you cope with all the names and pronunciations?
Well what was very useful was there was a little tone document at the beginning of the script that had phonetic spellings of all the names. So we were all on the same page. And I’m always quite good with the names; I’m a bit of a stickler for stuff for that. Although I tell you now, I think that there might be some discrepancies within the film when you see people saying ‘Dothraki’ or ‘Dothr-u-ki’ a little bit! You just have to say it fast and people go with it. But actually it kind of works because people are from different places in the story and none of it’s ridiculous.

It looks like an epic production on screen. What was your most awe-inspiring shoot?
The three days we did shooting the wedding scene, on this island off Malta called Gozo, just in that location with that archway, it was staggeringly beautiful and the sunsets that came in every day blew your mind. Also, you’re surrounded by hundreds of extras all done up with this detailed make-up and different looks and costumes and from all over the world.

The crazy thing was you’d realise that story-wise all of this detail was almost unjustifiable. We’re in a part of the storyline which doesn’t really connect up with the main storyline very strongly at first – you could change so many things from the book to make it much more shoot-able! Yet for no reason apart from fidelity and interest in telling a great story they just completely immerse themselves in details.

You could never see on camera what you see on set sometimes in terms of the art department, certain props, set design and even the threading of the costumes. People have given over their whole lives to get these details right which – details of things that don’t even exist. That’s kind of joyful. It’s just a brilliant arena to work in.

Does it help your acting when that world is completely immersive?
Absolutely, and hopefully it stops you from doing any too-hammy ‘fantasy’ acting – just because the realness of the detail around you reminds you that actually these things are very serious. I’m talking about kingdoms and honour but they’re not empty words here, they’re incredibly important and they’re rooted in this. These are very human characters. They’re not moustache-twiddling kids’ book characters. They’re all very serious about what they do and the stakes are very high.

So I think if you walked into a plastic set or it was all on green-screen or you were slightly embarrassed by your costume you couldn’t really stand up and say these potentially ridiculous words seriously. And that’s the thing about fantasy, it doesn’t often get done for adults because at any point you can stand up and say, “What are you talking about? Swords and dragons?” But here it is deadly serious.

Did you get involved in many battle scenes?
I did do some horsemanship. But no, Viserys is not so much a battler as someone who would like someone else to battle for him. So I wasn’t sword fighting much myself.

And how is your horsemanship?
I think you can say it’s much better than it was! I did loads of training. You don’t see me on a horse more than in a couple of scenes but luckily I got a very, very nicely behaved horse called Ruby. There was this day we filmed in Belfast doing a scene in which we and the Dothraki all arrive in Vaes Dothrak. There are all kinds of horses around. My horse was just brilliant; it was like a Zen horse. She just wasn’t rattled by anyone else and moved one step to the left when I asked her to. Everyone else’s, were moving around and getting spooked out. People thought it was my skill so I soaked it up and I enjoyed it but I think someone had just drugged my horse!

Your blond hair is a stand-out feature
It was a big wig job for me and Emilia every morning. I’d put on a bald cap first over my real hair and then the wig went on top. But you mustn’t call it blond: it’s meant to be the white hair of the Targaryens. It’s a family trait – all part of their dodgy genetics. It just reminds you, I think, how they are the only two left of their kind in the world so that’s probably a quite useful indicator.

What was it like working with someone just as plain big and scary as Jason Momoa?
Well he is big and he is scary physically but inside he’s like an eight-year-old child. That is kind of brilliant. He is so unlike Khal Drogo – now when I see him on the screen it’s strange not to see him smiling because that’s kind of his default expression.

The books have legions of obsessive fans. Have you had any exposure to that?
Luckily they don’t have my address! But it’s one of those things I guess you can tap into it if you want to. I guess it’s partly that people adore these books and also something about fantasy: it is all about detail and about, “Did you spot that? He is actually his brother and this is going to happen in the next…” so there are endless points of discussion.

If you had to take a bet on one of the families, who would you back?
The Targaryens, obviously! They invaded and united the Seven Kingdoms using dragons. That’s all you need to know.

But the dad was a nutter.
Well, he was very misunderstood.

THE COMPETITION
To be in the running to win one of 5 x Game of Thrones the Complete First Season DVDs, answer the question, “If Boromir from Lord of the Rings and Eddard Stark from Game of Thrones—both played by Sean Bean—had a fight to the death, who would win and how?” in 25 words or less.

TERMS & CONDITIONS:

Game of Skill
Competition commences on 21/03/12 and concludes on 18/04/12 at 12:00pm. Entry is open to all residents of Australia and New Zealand, but excludes all employees of Australian Penthouse. Entrants must provide their name, address and contact details and an answer to the question, “If Boromir from Lord of the Rings and Eddard Stark from Game of Thrones—both played by Sean Bean—had a fight to the death, who would win and how?” in 25 words or less. This is a Game of Skill which contains no element of chance, and which will be judged by members of the Australian Penthouse staff on 18/04/12. Five winners will receive 1 x Game of Thrones the Complete First Season DVDs, as detailed above. The promoters take no responsibility for lost or misdirected entries, and no correspondence will be entered into.

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