Interview: ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Showrunner Ira Parker on Making the Westeros Universe Series Stand On Its Own
Back in 2011, Game of Thrones premiered to a modest audience and grew its viewership organically as the water cooler show of the decade. It introduced fans to the world of Westeros and the noble houses that declare war on one another there. When the original show drew praise, HBO decided to kick off a Westerosi universe that includes prequel series House of the Dragon, which follows House Targaryen during a civil war within its own family. There’s now another show, smaller in size – 6 episodes that are significantly shorter than previous entries – that was able to grab the attention of fans new and old: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. The series follows Ser Duncan the Tall as he takes up a new squire with a secret identity, holding focus to just the tourney he’s participating in, making the story feel more contained. It’s a new look into Westeros, both hilarious and brutal, that has been an incredible new addition to Westeros lore.
I sat down and spoke with showrunner Ira Parker about the show, his connection to Westeros, the humor that George R.R. Martin instilled into the original series, and what comes next.
Tyler Doster: How long pre-House of the Dragon have you had a connection to the world of Westeros?
Ira Parker: I’m trying to think. So, House of the Dragon was pre-pandemic and a friend of mine scolded me for such behavior. He was just like, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” And gave me Game of Thrones, and I’ve been a faithful Westeros-ier since then. But then it goes away and you get interested in other things and you do so many other… never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that I would end up working in that world at all. The House of the Dragons, that job sort of came out of nowhere, and I’m very glad that it did and I’m very glad that Ryan brought me into that camp and it started off something that’s been one of the most creatively fulfilling relationships of my career.
TD: A parlay over to Seven Kingdoms, that was helpful.
IP: I think a lot of it was just and you pick up things like this on every show, but just watching the way that Ryan operates and first of all, he’s very much a writer’s writer and he knows what he wants, and being in a room with somebody who’s able to have a good sense of humor and have fun and also direct the conversation where they want you to go and make sure everyone still feels involved and creative, it’s a really tricky thing to do and he does it very well and he does it with seeming ease and it just comes very natural to him. He deals with, I would say, problems with just a lot of grace, and so I knew that if I ever got a shot to do it, I would want to borrow some of those skills that he has, I suppose, and use it in the making of my own show.
He has a lot of attention to detail. I think I came up on a few different shows where that was very important and maybe I ended up on shows like that because of my nature, but certainly that’s helped out a lot on Seven Kingdoms or any show that you do in a world with such a steeped lore. It’s important to pay attention to everything. Otherwise, it just starts to feel just a little inauthentic. You’re already in a fantasy world. It’s the dirt underneath people’s fingernails that matter. Its house relates to another because of a history that’s 50 years old and that doesn’t come up a lot in the book, but is there for them, and if these are real human beings, then they’re going to care about it. So I don’t know, I like that sort of storytelling.
TD: Was Seven Kingdoms always going to begin with the kind of framework of a comedy before moving into a more dramatic overtone?
IP: No, look, you mean a guy bearing his father figure? That’s the comedy part? (laughs) No, I’m kidding. No, I knew very quickly that the slaps were in. That was probably my very first draft of the cutaways to Ser Arlan hitting Dunk, ‘crack.’ I think there were five of them. I think we settled on three. That was my negotiation with George. Look, comedy was certainly not what I was going for. Everybody will react to work that you put out in the world a little bit differently, and I’m glad that people enjoy that aspect of it, but really Game of Thrones to me was always very funny. Those were some of my favorite parts, and if I think it comes inherently from a situation from a character, then it feels fair game to me. We certainly were never setting out to set up punchlines, set up punchlines, even though we are in the half-hour format, this is not meant to be a sitcom.
We wanted to stay as far away from Monty Python as possible and it can very easily crest into that if you’re not careful. It all had to come from Dunk. It had to come from his general awkwardness, naivete in this world and just the fact that he is very much an imperfect hero in that he’s not a hero and he’s not cut out for this work. He’s just a stupid kid with a dream, and that sets you up for a lot. Obviously the show moves away from that in episodes as we crest over from episodes three to four, and four into five, but it certainly doesn’t lose its sense of humor because I don’t think that should ever be lost. I’m not sure there’s any place on planet earth, no matter how serious and terrible it is that you couldn’t find comedy and people trying to make each other laugh.
So I think that’s just one of the core parts of a human experience, and so I think it belongs within this world and maybe there’s a little bit more in mind than somebody else’s, but no, look, I love letting a scene be what it should be. I love undercutting ultra serious stakes. I can’t stand dramas that take themselves too seriously. I think you need a little bit of that lightness. I don’t know, maybe it’s just who I am as a human being, but it’s certainly who George is as a human being too. I mean he undercuts his stuff more than anyone else, and the original show did it a lot too.
I got to say, being in that House of the Dragon room, that was one of the funniest rooms I was ever a part of, and maybe that when you’re not actually trying to do comedy all the time and it’s more serious, it’s less of a currency so people could just be a little looser, but Ryan and Sarah both just have a wonderful sense of humor and we had a lot of fun in there. In fact, one of the body song that’s Lionel Sings in episode three, I actually wrote at Sarah and Ryan’s behest for House of the Dragon when they were going to have two characters coming back from a night of drinking, and they’re like, “We need them to be singing a song, Ira, can you write a song?” And then I wrote that and I remember when I finished it, I called them up and I said, or no, I was talking to Sarah and I said, “Yeah, it’s done, but I have to perform it so that you could hear how it’s supposed to go.”
And she’s like, “Great, send over a video.” And I said, “No, it’s going to be live. I have to do it to both of you so you could hear it, but there’s not going to be any video evidence of me actually so it can’t get passed around.” And then after that, that conversation was never set up. My performance was never scheduled and so it just sort of went away. They moved on and then the pandemic hit and wiped out writer’s rooms and people meeting each other, and so I got to use it all those years later, but yeah, comedy is what makes Game of Thrones my favorite fantasy series.
TD: Do you feel like you have a little bit more freedom working on the six episodes when the plot of the six episodes is restricted to one place?
IP: I’ve always gravitated towards contained projects. I like having, I don’t know, a playground, certainly makes it easier on production as we’re seeing in season two, which has us in different countries, which a lot of season one was obviously we’re camping, we’re set up at Glenarm in Belfast and that was our home. Creatively, look, it’s good and bad. I see the appeal of a big show like House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones where you get to go from storyline to storyline, and pop around from place to place, and you just end up constructing stories and episodes and seasons differently, but when it’s only Dunk as your soul POV and he’s in one location, you’re cutting from Dunk to Dunk, and you have to find your rests, I suppose, differently. Your pacing is changed, so you need to make sure that your character has some quiet moments too. It can’t just be story, something happened to him at every moment.
Otherwise, it begins to feel a little forced. You sort of need to let your audience breathe for a second. You need a quiet moment of Dunk going to his tree that he just found and going for, having a bath and getting ready for the night at a little musical interlude, courtesy of Dan Romer. These are important things if you’re going to be locked into the same spot, but it’s creatively different, I think, is the best I can offer.
TD: Was Egg’s identity always going to be a reveal?
IP: Yes, it was my goal for that to happen, but I think it was actually Ryan who warned me that there’s a chance that it might not be held because it’s not a story twist, it’s a character, the property, so it just may already be out there, and the truth is that look, even on Game of Thrones, the book readers compared to the general audience is very small. So if they were able to protect things like the Red Wedding, I felt decently that we were going to get away with a similar thing. However, it was always in the back of my mind to make sure that it also looked good for people who already knew going into it or even for people who figured it out that they were still going to get a good experience, and I think because this whole show is basically from Dunk’s POV, even if you know going in, you’re sort of just then wondering, well when’s Dunk going to find out and how is he going to find out?
And you’re picking up on all the little bits that we did where you could see Egg noticing that the Targaryens are arriving and having a bit of a strange reaction, which plays differently depending on which side of the aisle you fall on there. So I think there was something for both sides, whether or not you knew or you didn’t know. Again, at the end of that episode, if it’s a twist for the audience, that’s great, but the look on Dunk’s face when he sees it is so important for him. I think that there’s a lot of joy to be had, even if you knew ahead of time just seeing how Dunk is going to be dealing with it.
TD: Going into the second season, what’s it going to look like with the Targaryens looking for Egg and Dunk thinking that he’s gotten permission to go with him?
IP: I really thought I was just doing something funny at the end of the season, and then people started bringing it to my attention in season two that, “Oh no, this is a big major cliffhanger that you have to address.” And I’m just like, “No, I don’t want to do that. I just want to go and do book two now.” I hope we have found a fun compromise. Look, I want this show to be fun. I want people to enjoy spending their half hour with us in Westeros every week. My goal is to stay completely on Canon’s story as much as possible, and I’m trying to swing this background into it because look, if you read book one, when Maekar comes to Dunk’s camp and Dunk says the same things that he says at our show to him, “Your sons are basically shitheads because they were raising the castle, like you should come on the road with me.
Maekar doesn’t say yes in the books. He just sort of does his grimacy Maekar thing, and then he fucks off and then the next morning, Egg shows up to this camp, no guard, no anyone else around, no escort, just a prince just showing up in this camp and Dunk says, “Okay, well I guess I convinced your father,” and takes it with him. We never see Maekar say yes, and yeah, there’s other things that the novella probably suggests that that was maybe the case, but confirmation is not 100% there. So it felt reasonable to make this and now we’re just trying to keep it. We don’t want it to in any way change the story that we’re telling in book two. So I think hopefully we’ve done a really nice job running it into the Sworn Sword.
Ira Parker is Emmy-eligible in the categories of Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series for the episode “In the Name of the Mother” from A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
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