A Walking Tour of Westeros (with guest Steve Toussaint)
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What is this brief mortal life, if not the pursuit of legacy? Jason, can I give you like an impossible and annoying either or situation? Okay, so would you rather be a completely despised tyrant with a legacy that will be remembered for generations? Okay. Or...

Like a, you know, middle management master of whispers who kind of goes unnoticed, but actually manages to stay alive and is not, you know, reviled by thousands of people into the future. What do you think?

It's an interesting choice. How's the dental and the health plan in general for middle management? I mean, I think it's probably pretty bad for both. I don't want to say that that's going to totally swing me, but it is going to be a factor. There is a retirement match. I will say that. Ooh. You know what? I'm going to go with Master of Whispers. I'm going to go for that retirement match. I like staying alive. And so, you know, ultimately, while the money doesn't quite match up,

I'm going to take life and a good retirement. I think that that works for me. It's very responsible. Can I throw in like a curveball just to see if this changes your decision? Okay. What if you were a hated tyrant who had dragons?

You know, I love I love pets. I absolutely love pets. But it's it is a responsibility that, you know, feeding and walking and all that stuff. And the dragons live, you know, legitimately like 120, 130 years. And that's just it's a lot. You know, it's a lot. And again, I love animals, but I think I would just have to pass.

Wow. So you're sticking with your opinion. I'm going to stick with it. Quiet, a quiet life. Respect. Retired, you know, in the reach, growing tomatoes. But you're still getting all that hot goss, you know? I think it sounds kind of perfect. I want that hot goss. I need that hot goss. That's all I'm in it for, Greta. The goss. Welcome to the official Game of Thrones podcast, House of the Dragon. I am Jason Concepcion, host of the podcast X-Ray Vision from Crooked Media and Binge Mode from The Ringer.

And I'm Greta Johnson, host of WBEZ's Nerd App Podcast. And this is a Game of Thrones podcast for everyone, whether you're an OG Thrones watcher or if you can't wait to start watching with the new HBO original series, House of the Dragon. Before the show premiere on August 21st, we're taking you through all the House of the Dragon news and updates before the main event.

Yes. And then once the show airs, we are going to give you an exciting recap plus exclusive interviews with the cast and crew every week right after the show airs. In this episode, Jason and I are going to break down the latest House of the Dragon news, and we're going to take you back to the magic of Comic-Con, which Jason got to go visit. You'll also hear my interview with Steve Toussaint from Comic-Con, which was so fun.

That sounds super cool. And then later, we are actually going to take you on a tour through Westeros. We're going to stop by all your favorite spots and go through some of the important histories of each and its significance in this world. Is there anywhere you're super excited to stop in at, Jason?

Gosh, I'd love to see the capital real estate prices in King's Landing are popping off, as you know, as they are all around the world. And I would just like to get my hands on something there. Smart before the interest rates go up, you know? Yeah. I completely agree. I think I'm really mostly excited about the Red Keep. I just feel like, you know, that's where like all the drama happens, right? So let's go check it out. Let's go. So this is the part of the show where we get into news and updates around House of the Dragon. And listen to this.

Hear that sound? You hear that? That's my dragon. That's my little dragon baby. One of the fun things that we were able to do was use the Dracarys app, which is elevator pitch. It's Tamagotchis for dragons. So you've got your little dragon. You hatch it from an egg. You use your phone to like look around the world so you can see where your dragon is like in your room. Right now my dragon is like...

flitting between my desk and the floor. And then you feed it as one would do, just like a Tamagotchi, you're feeding it. And it's wonderful to watch her grow. And Jason, among the many things you got to do at Comic-Con, you actually got to download this app early too. And there's audio of you meeting your little dragon for the first time. Let's take a listen. Yes, we're entering the hatchery, baby. Oh, there's the eggs. I see them. You know what?

I'm gonna go with the red egg. Oops. It's hatching. I've claimed my egg. It's a red egg, beautiful red egg. Now taking it home to the United States from ruins of old Valeria. It's hatching now. And it's beautiful. Let's call it Canaris, since we're here at the San Diego Comic-Con. It's making me Valerianize it, which is smart. Canaris! Canaris, come back. To me, my dragon. Mazis! Here he comes.

What a delightful little creature. And this is only the beginning of our life together, of course. It will take some months, if not years, for Canaris to be big enough for me to ride them and, you know, destroy entire regions. But I hope that with a little love, we'll be able to do that.

I only just downloaded this yesterday, but it's been super fun. What's the name of your dragon? So it's, you know, Valerian for waffles. I decided to go with waffles. There was a there was like a doodle across the street from me years ago named waffles. And they'd be like, God damn it, waffles. And I just thought it was the funniest thing. So that's great. I figured. So it's Valerian for waffles. Valerian.

Vavilera. I love that. Apparently it's Valyrian for waffles. Who knew? One thing I wanted to say, Greta, and I talked about this with some of the lovely producers and people that we're working with. I think that we should, you know, just to kind of like juice our engagement here with our dragons, I wanted to see how you'd feel about maybe a little bit of a competition. I think we should see whose dragon loves its owner more. That's how I think that we should frame this conversation.

our time with the Dracarys app, I'm trying to make sure that Carneros loves me more than your dragon unpronounceable waffle name loves you. I mean, okay, so I'm not opposed to like a good, you know, friendly competition, but like what are the metrics for this though, dude? And we'll figure that out. It's very on the fly. It's very ground level. No bad ideas in a brainstorm. Yeah, I picked up on that.

Okay, well, Jason, I guess you and I can kind of hammer out the details of our friendly competition in another week. We'll keep checking in on our dragons. But in the meantime, you listening right now can also get a dragon of your own. You can download the Dracarys app at the App Store or on Google Play. You'll be hearing more about Comic-Con next week. But right now, maybe it's time we took a little tour through the beautiful land of Westeros.

the location for most of the events of House of the Dragon and, of course, Game of Thrones. And then if we have time, if we have time, peek on over to Essos and see what they're doing over there. Essos for a treat if we're good. Is it one of those kind of deals? That's exactly right.

So the reason why we are going on a tour of Westeros is because, you know, and if you're already familiar with Game of Thrones, either the books or the series or just in general, this is like a huge sweeping place. There are a lot of different locations with really distinct and important histories. So what we're going to try to do in just a couple of minutes is essentially kind of connect some dots for you so that you can go into this new show feeling like, oh, yeah, I know what the Red Keep is. I know what's happening here. This makes sense to me, essentially, is what we're doing.

Okay, so Jason, I think we should set this up by doing a little foundation of stuff I remember from Game of Thrones to kind of like set that table and then we can talk about, you know, more in-depth places we need to know about for House of the Dragon. Cool? I love it. Okay, cool. So we have the place closest to my heart because I grew up in Alaska, north of the wall. Love the wildlings. Great crew, you know. Good group of people. Um.

From there, moving south, we have Winterfell, which would be the home of the Starks. Winter is coming. Very cold. Lots of furs. Love it. From there, what would be next south? Would it be the Vale? Oh, coming right down from the north? Yes, the Vale of Arryn is right there. So that's where Jon Arryn and Lysa live, the Tully resident. There was like the cliffs and the Moondore and all of that horrific weirdness. And then let's see if we were just going...

If we were going south from there, would we I mean, we'd end up in King's Landing if we just kept going south. That's exactly right.

And, of course, that's where, you know, the ruler of Westeros, usually the king, open to it being a queen, lives. And that's where the Iron Throne is. And, of course, in King's Landing, you've got Flea Bottom, you've got the Red Keep, that's the castle. And then, you know, if you, like, dodge east, then there's Dragonstone, which is where Stannis Baratheon lived, and that's where Daenerys set up her camp when she was getting ready to take shit over. That's exactly right. Okay, so aside from all of those places...

What should we set up as we're entering the world of House of the Dragon? Well, we should also think about Old Valyria, which was an area over in Essos. RIP to Old Valyria. Old Valyria was destroyed in the Doom, and the only people that survived who rode dragons were the Targaryens. Lucky them. Okay. And yeah, we talked about that a little bit last week.

Yeah, that's where Jorah took a swim that he didn't want to take in the waters there and contracted a case of greyscale. Tough look for my guy, Jorah. Yeah, so loyal.

So, yeah, Jason, those are kind of the main places that I remember from Game of Thrones. It has been a really long time since I actually looked at a map of Westeros, though, for sure. Well, let's check one out. Let's look at one now as we take a little tour across the important locations here.

in this world, starting with the island of Dragonstone. So if you look at King's Landing and then you look to the east, you'll see Blackwater Bay, this body of water here, Blackwater Bay. And there's an island called Driftmark. That's where the Valerians live. And then the next island over is Dragonstone. Oh, yeah, it's a little...

So Dragonstone was, as we said in the previous episode, is originally the farthest outpost of the Valyrian Empire. It is dominated by the castle Dragonstone, castle of the same name. It's where Daenerys was born, right?

Daenerys was born in that castle and legend has it that castle was created by dragon fire. That's how they were able to get that kind of like the melty look of the towers, which mimic the necks of dragons and stuff like that. That's wild. I don't think I really realized how close Dragonstone is to King's Landing. Like it's just kind of right off the edge, really.

It's like three skips of a stone over to King's Landing, which is why in Game of Thrones, ahead of the Battle of the Blackwater, everybody in the capital was so nervous because they knew that Stannis' fleet could come over at any given time. Now, Dragonstone was also the home of the heir apparent,

So whatever king is in power, let's say they want to signal to the realm that their favorite son or daughter is next in line to rule. They will let them live in Dragonstone. And that is a signal to everyone like, hey, this person's next.

That seems like some good intel to have for sure. So what about, what's in King's Landing that we should like remind folks of, you think? King's Landing. It's in kind of the armpit of the bay. Right in the armpit of the bay at the mouth of the Blackwater Rush River. This is the very spot where Aegon the Conqueror made landfall when he was making his invasion. Oh.

He landed here. There was just like some fishing villages, not very much, but they decided, you know what, let's build the capital here. We've already got a fortress that we've been building for the invasion. Let's make it a proper capital. And that evolved over the reigns of the first three Targaryen kings. And the main place you're going to want to visit whenever you're talking about King's Landing is the Red Keep, which is the home of the royal family. Mm-hmm.

And I remember like the Red Keep came up in Game of Thrones. There were a couple of big events that happened there for sure. Oh, yeah. A lot of action takes place there. A lot of meetings of noble houses take place there. That's where the Iron Throne is inside the Red Keep. And the Red Keep, as we saw when Tyrion was kind of scurrying around numerous little hidden passageways, is riddled, riddled, Greta.

with secret passageways, hidden doors, all that kind of stuff. Now, Maegor the Cruel, King Maegor the Cruel, you can tell, was not a nice man. He oversaw most of the building of the Red Keep, and he really wanted all those secret passageways in there. And in order for them to remain secret, he threw a big party for all the construction workers when they were done building it, and he had them all killed. So no one could talk about the passageways anymore.

That's like exquisitely. See, this is why I love Game of Thrones, because like people do shit like that. Like it's that bad, you know? I mean, when your nickname is the cruel, not good. Especially in this world. Not great. Like on the scale of Game of Thrones, he was cruel. Oh, my God. Yeah, that's rough. That's real rough.

So we should talk about Flea Bottom, too, yeah? Yeah, let's talk about Flea Bottom. This is the place where the regular folks in the capital live. The normies. The normies, the poor folks, the small folk, as they say. A famous thing about Flea Bottom is Ebola Brown, which is kind of like the iconic...

The iconic dish of Flea Bottom is a bowl of brown, which is a bowl of brown-colored stew containing meat of unknown origin, possibly human. Could be. I was really hoping that we could just not talk about bowl of brown, Jason. No.

And this is the place that Arya hid out, you know, hunting pigeons after the arrest of Ned and the purging of the Stark household from the Red Keep. I should add that since this is taking place...

hundreds of years before the events of Game of Thrones, there's going to be certain things that are different. The Great Sept of Baelor, which Cersei blew up, is not even built yet. And the Dragon Pit, which was where they had the big meeting at the end of Game of Thrones. It was a ruin then. It is absolutely in service now. It is a full-fledged stable for all your dragons. That sounds cool. I'm excited to see that.

Let's head over to the Riverlands, which is kind of like northwest of the capital city. Yeah, it's like almost due north, really. It's more north than I thought it was, actually.

Absolutely right. The Riverlands is the place where often a lot of the wars and battles happen because all these rivers lead people, lead invading armies to kind of meet at certain places. The Riverlands is kind of dominated by this God's Eye Lake, which is this big lake with a little island in the middle of it. And on the north shore of that lake is Harrenhal, the largest castle in all of Westeros. Wow.

built by King Harren the Black of the Iron Islands. He tried to hold out here during Aegon's conquest, and Aegon is like, no, you're coming out by hook or by crook. And Harren was like, I'm not coming out. You're gonna have to burn me in here. And King Aegon said, guess what? I'm gonna burn you here. Melted the entire castle around Harren and his sons, which is why Harrenhal is all melted and ruined when we see it in Game of Thrones.

Woof. And that's also where Arya was Tywin's cupbearer. So just north of that, we get into some mountains. The Vale of Arryn, a very mountainous region with lots of kind of deep valleys. And this is home of the Arryn family for many, many centuries.

We saw the Eyrie, which is one of the Arryn's castles, but probably the most dramatic, certainly. As Tyrion told to Bronn, it said it's impregnable because it's just so high up, very, very high up to the point where a classic Arryn move is to execute prisoners by throwing them out the moon door, down into the valley, and then they die. Good Lord. Skyhole. I prefer to call it the Skyhole. I love that Skyhole. Yeah.

Now, if we keep going north, you come to the swamplands of the Neck, which are basically the traditional border of the north. No invading army has ever moved past the Neck, ever, ever, ever. The north has never been successfully invaded from the south by land because the Neck is so impenetrable. And then you keep going up the King's Road, up, up.

Up, up, up, and then eventually you come to- It's so far. It's very, very far and very vast and really, really empty because it's very cold. This is the largest but also the least populated area of Westeros. And the capital of the north is Winterfell, the home of the Starks. Yep, Winterfell.

Winter is coming. That's what they say. And then if you keep going all the way up, you head to Castle Black and then eventually the wall. Yes. Yeah, that's where shit gets real weird.

Jason, this has been super helpful, though. It's funny. I can't remember the last time I like zoomed in on a map of Westeros, but this is fascinating. There's all kinds of different places and some of the context behind them is super useful, I think, especially for folks coming into this new show, you know. But now, Jason, I want to hear all about your interview with actor Steve Toussaint, who plays Corlys Velaryon on House of the Dragon. Steve was a wonderful interview and really, really generous with his thoughts on the

To me, what was fascinating was just his take on one, how he found the character of Corliss and managed to put that all together. And then also like I was really, you know, as a selfishly, I love asking creative people about their creative process. And he really let us in there. You know, that's awesome. All right. Let's give it a listen.

Hi, everyone. Really looking forward to today's conversation because I'm joined by the one and only very talented Steve Toussaint. You've seen Steve in roles like Prince of Persia, The Sands of Time, It's a Sin, and Doctors. But of course, we're here to talk to him about his portrayal of Sir Corlys Velaryon, the Sea Snake. Steve, welcome to the official Game of Thrones podcast. Oh, thank you so much. Happy to be here.

Talk to us about finding Corlys Velaryon. You go into the audition. How did you try to embody this character? Oh, good question. Okay, so it was actually quite interesting. I had a face-to-face meeting with the two showrunners, Miguel and Ryan. And actually at that meeting, all we talked about was fathers. Wow.

Yeah, so I had just done something with the director Steve McQueen that had been recently aired about a father. And so myself and Miguel talked about our fathers, about our friends' fathers and so on. And that was the key to this character because despite the fact that, of course, he is a very wealthy man, he's an adventurer, an explorer and a warrior...

He is concerned with legacy and he's concerned very much with sorting out the future for his children and for their children and so forth. So actually that was the way to get into him.

As a fan of fantasy, who is a fan of color, fan of sci-fi as well, I'm just delighted to be talking to you because, you know, so often in these imaginary worlds, no one's imagining. We're not there. We're not there. No one imagined us there. How do you feel about being here? Again, I'm so delighted to be talking to you.

I'm very happy. I'm very glad that between the discussions between Ryan and Miguel and Mr. Martin, they decided that they wanted to put some color in. For the other show, for Game of Thrones, for example, there were several parts that some of my friends were playing, actually. But I think they were pirates and robbers and slaves.

So for them to then decide that, well, the richest man, at least when we meet him, when we meet them, for him to be a man of color, I thought it was a very brave thing. Now, of course, when my casting was announced, there were some people who were not quite so keen on people who look like me playing this part. And there was some of that stuff, which was a little bit annoying because you just want to be able to, it's a big enough task as it is without having to do with that stuff.

But, hey, listen, I'm not an expert on racism, but I'm very experienced in receiving it. So I kind of thought, well, haters are going to hate. So I'm just going to get on and do my thing. So Corliss, you mentioned the richest man in the Seven Kingdoms at this particular time. Tell us about...

how he got so rich, his family, his relationship to this power struggle that's going on. Okay, so how Corlys made his money. So he's from an extremely old family. His family were one of the first to come to Westeros, but they were always seafarers. Didn't have that much money, but he was a very gifted sailor. I was going to say seaman, but for some reason it still makes me laugh. I'm trying to mature. It is HBO, so it's okay either way.

Anyway, so at a very early age, he found a second home in the sea. And so I think he went on his first voyage at about four with an uncle. He went on his first solo voyage at about 16 or 17. And then I think around 2021, he built his own ship that was called the Sea Snake, which is from where he gets his nickname.

And then he made these famous nine voyages. And these are the voyages from which he then made his fortune. He went out to these wonderful places and brought back gifts and spices and so forth and traded them. And that's how the Valarians received their wealth. And that's why he is the wealthiest man. Now, in terms of his relationship to the throne, I think you were asking? Yes.

So when we begin this season, the older king has no heirs. So he then decides that he's going to go to the council and say, you will pick. They have a choice. His oldest living male nephew, I think he's his nephew, is Viserys in this series played by Paddy, or Viserys' cousin, Rhaenys, played by Yves Best, my wife.

So the realm gets to vote. And of course, they're not going to vote for a woman. Right. So they vote for Viserys. And whereas Rhaenys very quickly decides, okay, that's just the way life is. Mm-hmm.

Corlys is still like, "No, it should have been you." And for an awful lot of the season, he's just like, "Should have been you." And in fact, she's actually called the Queen that never was. And I think he takes it a lot more personally than she does. And so that is the motor for most of the season for Corlys is, "How do I get us back to where we should be? 'Cause this is ridiculous." Because Viserys is a lovely man, but not necessarily a good king. You mentioned the Nine Voyages. This is one of the things that's being discussed as a prequel. Do you want to do your pitch for a...

For a Nine Voyages prequel? Oh, my goodness. No, you know what? Talented as I am, I cannot reach the 20s again. So I think that's going to be someone much younger and much prettier than me who'll be playing that part. If they do it so that there's a bit where at the beginning and at the end where I'm sitting in an armchair with a pipe

and some warm milk and saying, "Yes, that was my adventure," I'd be happy to do that, but I don't think they're going to be casting me as any-- some young, fresh-faced pup, unfortunately. You mentioned your on-screen wife, Eve Best, who plays Princess Rhaenys, the queen that never was. What's their relationship like? Ah, that's good. So one of the first things-- 'cause we had a rehearsal period before we actually started shooting, and so one of the things that we would discuss were our interpersonal relationships.

And one of the first questions, I don't know if I asked or if Eve asked, but we asked both Ryan and Miguel, was this marriage for love?

Or was it some sort of merger? And they were both very clear that it was a love relationship. And I like that idea. And that's one of the things that I've said in the past is that it's one of the relationships that, well, certainly myself reading the scripts, I really rooted for them because there was no politics involved in their relationship. It was just that they loved each other. And I think that's what we've tried to show that it's maintained throughout the season, even though they have their rifts.

there is a moment, and again, I won't say what happens, but there is a moment when he leaves the family home. Things get too much and he decides, I'm going back to the sea because I understand the sea. And then when he comes home, he has to explain, well, I thought I'd let you down. And she's like, well, no, when we are facing threats, drama, we're better together. And he's like, yeah, absolutely, you're right. So I think it's

Probably the healthiest of the relationships in the show, I think. I'd have to go through them again now, but I think it probably is. I'm biased. What is it like working with Eve? What's that collaboration like? Oh, it's utter hell. No, um...

-Have you spoken to Eve yet? -Not yet. She is absolutely lovely. Half the job is done just knowing her. You couldn't want for a better scene partner. In fact, I told her this. I think after the very first thing that we shot of the whole season was myself and her. And I went home and I said to my partner,

Thank God for Eve Best. And when I got back the next morning, I said to her, I said that, and she was like, oh. Because like most of the good ones, she has no idea just how good she is. And so she's like, oh, I don't know. Did I do that right? And it's always gold. No, she's a joy. And also, one of the things that you want from a scene partner is

is the willingness and ability to play. And she's that. She's an absolute joy. You mentioned his wife was passed over and his feeling that, you know, I'm not going to let our family get screwed again. Is it about power for him, power for power's sake? Or is it more that we have been slighted, his family has been slighted? What is it about power that interests Corliss in this story? I think he would say it's about the fact that we as a family were slighted. Mm-hmm.

At one point in the story, that's what he would say. It's not about me, darling. It's you. Right. And I'm disgusted with what they did to you and it's an injustice. But I think as the story goes on, he is forced to admit to himself, no, it's actually about me because she has let it go.

She has said, "We're fine. We're rich. I don't need any of that." But he still bangs on the back, "No, no, you do, you do." So I think ultimately, really, it's about him. And it's about him being closer to the throne, him having more influence on the way the realm goes. But he has just hidden it under this idea that it's all about my wife. What about his kids, Eleanor, Leanna? How is he as a father?

That's a hard one because I want to say he's great, but he's not good. Do you know what it is? I think he's...

God, that's a good question. He is one of these fathers who is like, I know what's best for you. Shut up. And so I say, yeah, I mean, and we see that midway through the season, how he is with his son, particularly he's a little hard on his son. I think he loves his children, but he is basically you're going to do this thing because it's good for the family. And I don't care about who you are and what you think.

But yeah, I don't think he's... He's not the listening father. Right. A rarity in this world, to be fair. Are there any parts of Corlys that you relate to or anything that you see in him that you say, I can hook onto that, that's like me? Well, he's black. Haters. I would think the only thing that I find similar...

is the position that he places his relationship in, in that it's so very important to him. I understand that entirely. That idea that all of this is worth nothing without my significant other. I think that's one of the things that I sort of latched onto with him. 'Cause as I said, he's a father, I'm not a father.

But I understand how precious it is to be able to be yourself to at least one person in the world who you can just open up and be, I'm scared, I'm afraid, whatever. So I think I would say that.

Whenever I think about Thrones or English actors, UK-based actors in general, I'm always amazed at the well-roundedness. You could watch a BBC crime procedural, you see them. Harry Potter, there's another. Game of Thrones, there they are. House of the Dragon, there they are. At what point, just to zoom out a little bit, at what point did you realize, oh, acting, that's the thing. That's what I'd like to do. So I grew up in an area of London, southeast London. It's two areas, New Cross and Deptford. And they're kind of

close to what you might call projects. Basically, where I grew up, there were no actors. That was another world. So I never really thought about it. Went to university, did a couple of plays and thought, "Wow, that'd be great," but came back to where I grew up to have a proper job. And then what happened was,

Gary Oldman appeared. Now, Gary Oldman is from my neighborhood. I never knew him 'cause we're different generations, but I watched him in a film and someone said he's from New Cross. And I was like, "Oh my God, what? "People from here can be actors." And then I started to pursue it. I started to do amateur theater. There was a moment I went to see a play by August Wilson called "My Rainy's Black Bottom," which they made into a film just recently, a national theater. And I remember walking out and saying, "God, if I could make someone feel the way this has made me feel, that would be brilliant."

So I started acting, just doing amateur stuff. There was a moment when I was playing Othello. If you're familiar with the story, the last scene, he's going to kill her. Spoiler. Sorry. 400 years old. But anyway, so there's a moment when he walks out onto the stage and he says, I'm going to kill her. Yeah. You know, whatever. And as I did that, I looked into the audience and I realized I had them. It's a wonderful feeling to have. If I do this, I do that. I have control of them. Maybe that was the moment.

I mean, at that stage, I had no pretensions to be working in screen. I was just gonna be a theater actor, like Larry Olivier, Gilbert, all those people. Do you know what I mean? But that moment, that thing, that shared experience, to be a part of that is still a wondrous thing. - The creative life.

whether it's writing or acting or whatever, is often it's a gambler's life. Was there a point where you're like, "Look at this, I think I'm making a living. I think I can do this." Yeah, only recently, last say 10 or 15 years, I think. I don't know, someone said, "Plans are what make the gods laugh." Right? Yeah. So you would just go from job to job. And I was talking to somebody the other day and saying, I used to have this thing where I would be like, "Oh, if I do that job, it'll lead to this." So the first time that I worked at our National Theatre, I thought, "This is it."

And I had a tiny part in the first Judge Dredd movie way back in the 90s. And I was convinced that me and Sly Stallone were going to be pals and hang out. The first time I wrote to an R. West end, the first time I did a movie and so on. And then eventually I thought, you know what? I'm spending all this time in my career looking over there when I should be enjoying this right now.

And I think the moment I decided to do that, my life was healthier. So I enjoy the moment. I don't worry about what this job will do for me or what it might do for me or what people think about it. I just think I'm going to enjoy the here and now and let the rest take care of itself. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So that's kind of what I try to keep as my philosophy.

Steve, I don't know how your sword work is, but if you had to fight one of the characters in House of the Dragon, which one do you think you could take? There's a list. Okay. Easiest to say who I would avoid. So I'd probably avoid Paddy. Okay. Because Paddy's actually a very gifted boxer. Wow. And he knows how to throw a punch. Good info for me. I'm going to make sure. Rhys is lovely, but I just feel like...

He's just a bit devious, you know? There's a darkness to Rhys. So I'd probably avoid him the rest of Fair Game. The rest I'd give him a slap, he'd be fine. Don't tell Matt I said that. - Do you enjoy the physical aspect of it? The battles, the swordplay, the armor? - You know what? I enjoy it as an idea.

So what happens is you get the scripts and you go, "Oh my God, there's a battle. That's going to be great. And I'm going to imagine." And there was a huge battle of wills between myself and Ryan and Miguel because there is a battle scene and I didn't want to wear the helmet. I wanted to, I was like, "No, I've got this image of this, his locks just flowing in the air as he's swinging his weapon." And they were like, "No, he's a good fighter. He would wear a helmet because he'd get his head bashed in."

And this went on. I said, no, no, I don't want to wear it. And eventually I had to wear it because they're the bosses. But so what happens is you then spend weeks training with stunt guys going through the choreography of this thing. Because my character, he doesn't have a sword. He has this huge heavy staff thing that has like a double edged blade on one side and a huge heavy ball on the other. So the ball is for like bashing people's heads in and the blade is for cutting people's heads off.

And so we practiced that and you have this thing where they all come at you in an orderly fashion and you duck and swipe. But of course, then you get onto the set and suddenly there's all this smoke everywhere and they're coming at you and suddenly you, rather than looking like Sean Connery, you're just going, ah, ah!

And then you sort of go, cut that together and make me look sexy. And they haven't showed it to me yet, so I don't know if I do look sexy. But when you're standing there on the dunes with the thing like that, with the stake, and then they sort of go, action, you have to run down. That bit's great. And then the fighting is like, oh, God, let it be over. Let it be over. Steve Toussaint, thanks so much for joining us. Oh, thank you very much. Delightful. Greta, I'm going to call it. I think Steve Toussaint is...

going to be an absolute fan favorite on this show. Oh, my God. That's not like a crazy prediction, but I am going to predict it nonetheless, and if I'm right, I definitely want an award. Okay, great. Yeah, we'll give you a little... Let me take it again. I need a prize. You can have a prize. Sure. Sure.

Like a little fish, like a little seahorse or something. Yeah, I'll come up with something. That's fine. We can totally do that. Jason, seriously, though, I did really love this interview. I think you're right. He seems like a really lovable guy. I thought, like, he just had a lot of really interesting things to say about power dynamics, not only in the show, but also, I mean, I don't need to tell you, like, high fantasy is generally...

not a very diverse space. And I think partly what's so exciting about this new show is that the world is expanding in a very necessary and important way. And I thought you two spoke about that really beautifully. Yeah, he had a great answer there and was so forthcoming about his feelings. You know, there's always seemingly going to be blowback when people of color are imagined in high fantasy contexts like this. And it's just, again, like I said in the interview, it's,

I was just so delighted to be talking to him. Yeah, it was great to see him there.

Yeah, I'm really curious to see also how his character evolves. It sounds like there's going to be a lot of nuance around the idea of, you know, is he bitter for the sake of his wife or is he bitter for his own pride? And I think seeing how that plays out is going to be really interesting. So I'm excited for that, too. As a book reader, I'm not going to say too much about Corliss Valerian, but loved hearing that interview, loved hearing it back. And that's it for today's episode.

pop quiz on locations next week. Just kidding. Don't forget to join us again next week for the last episode before House of the Dragon premieres on August 21st. No geography test, I promise. Oh my God. My like American geography is terrible because growing up in Alaska, everything is just small and to the south. It's like, I don't like Missouri. I,

I don't know, man. I can't tell you. And of course, also next week, I am super excited about this because you got to interview the one and only George R.R. Martin, the creator of all of our source material for Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon. Was he fun to talk to?

I'd talk about it, but I actually legitimately blacked out and have no memory that it happened. Oh, bummer. Wow. My body locked up and then I collapsed, much like one of those feigning goats that you'll see on social media and elsewhere. That exact thing happened to me. Wow. So I'm absolutely shocked that I'm still in this job. So you're excited to hear it too, is what you're saying. I can't wait to hear what I said before I blacked out.

I got to interview him once a couple of years ago and he was lovely. So I'm excited to hear what you have too. It's going to be really fun. And then of course, after next week too, because the show is starting to come out, we're going to move the podcast to Sunday nights too. So that means you can watch the newest episode of House of the Dragon and then like immediately run over to your phone or wherever and hit play on our show, which I'm super excited about too. And we'll have recaps of the episodes. And then we're also going to have interviews with the cast and crew too.

We want to have you do more than just listen. We want to hear from you. Don't forget to leave a rating and review wherever you get your podcast. You can find us, of course, on the Game of Thrones and House of the Dragons social media handles. You can find me on Twitter at netw3rk.

And you can find me at Greta M. Johnson on Twitter and Instagram. The official Game of Thrones podcast, House of the Dragon, is produced by HBO Max in collaboration with iHeartRadio. This podcast is hosted by Jason Concepcion. And Greta Johnson. Our executive producer is Molly Socia. Our supervising producer is Nakia Swinton. Our lead sound engineer is Matt Stillo.

This episode was edited by Sierra Spreen. Our producer is Jason Concepcion in association with Crooked Media. Special thanks to Michael Gluckstadt, Allison Cohen, Kenya Reyes, and Becky Rowe at the HBO Max podcast team, and Ashley Morton, Dana Froome, and Liz Keating at HBO Creative Marketing.