One of HBO's biggest shows of last year managed to redeem a franchise that had a disastrous ending. After a disappointing Season 8 finale, Game of Thrones felt like a story best left to the page in the hands of author George R. R. Martin. But, then House of the Dragon premiered, and it felt like Westeros had new life breathed into it. Though the series was not without some faults, overall, Season 1 of the hit new fantasy series was firing on all cylinders.

The series is currently filming Season 2 despite the writers strike. While it's unclear if House of the Dragon will maintain its prestige and high quality in the second season, Season 1 will always stand head and shoulders above other fantasy shows. We spoke with director Clare Kilner about the show. Kilner directed three episodes of the first season, Episodes 4 "King of the Narrow Sea", 5 "We Light the Way", and 9 "The Green Council". Kilner discussed with us the progress on Season 2, revealing how many episodes she's directing currently and what it's like working on a more linear storytelling. She also discussed her biggest challenge filming Season 1, working with large crowds and special effects, the inspiration behind that surprising brothel scene in Episode 4, the semantics behind Episode 5's dance sequence, and what finally made Criston Cole snap.

House of the Dragon Episode 9- Olivia Cooke as Alicent & Tom Glynn-Carney as Aegon
Image via HBO

COLLIDER: I will just jump right in, Clare. I’m very excited to speak with you, House of the Dragon was definitely one of my favorite shows last year, I just loved it. I especially loved your episodes, actually, so are you currently working on Season 2? Is that what’s keeping you busy?

CLARE KILNER: I am.

How's that going?

KILNER: It's going great. I shot a few days in the last couple of weeks, and then actually tomorrow I'm diving full in until September. Yeah, I'm doing Episodes 2 and 5, really interesting episodes. [Laughs] It's really difficult to talk about because I'm worried I'm gonna give it away, but it's great. It's really wonderful, having done three episodes prior, to come into something which is like such a family. I know the actors, have this rapport with them, you know, it's just, it's really exciting. I'm always nervous before new jobs even if I know everybody, but I love it.

Are you just doing the two episodes or is there more that you're doing?

KILNER: I'm doing two episodes. There's eight episodes this season, and I'm doing two. There are five different directors working.

Oh, wow! Well, you directed, like I said, some of my favorite episodes. Having been behind the camera, do you have a particular scene that you're proud of or that was particularly challenging that you guys managed to accomplish?

KILNER: Yeah, you know, especially – Episode 9 was the dragon coming out from under the boards in the dragon pit. It was huge because in the actual script, it's about five lines at the end of the episode, "And the dragon emerges," but what it entailed is it was a very big, complicated sequence because we were shooting in a studio that was not as large as what the dragon pit would be, which the dragon pit is actually would actually be the size of a football pitch.

So, for starters, everything we had to shoot, we had to do a lot of CGI. So apart from the dragon being CGI and people falling into pits that didn't exist and all of that, we had to – For example, when Rhaenys (Eve Best) enters, and she watches the coronation, she had to just be staring at a blue screen because then we shoot the coronation, and we have to make it smaller to fit in the correct perspective from her point of view, for example. And that scene, I did a lot of research on footage of people who had been in large spaces and being crushed, like some awful footage, actually. But I wanted to try, you know, I just wanted to base it on some sort of reality since we're working in this very sort of fantasy space.

Then the other thing we had to do when we were shooting the coronation and shooting Alicent (Olivia Cooke) and Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) and the dragon emerging, we had these huge wind machines and someone with a blue ball holding a stick, and then there's me on the microphone going, “And then the dragon emerges and there's dust everywhere, and you can't see everything!” [Laughs] So it's like you become a bit of an actor, you become part of it because there's so many people in that space, you've got to get them all trying to really be truthful in very unreal and strange circumstances.

Tom Glynn-Carney as Aegon II in House of the Dragon
Image via HBO

I was actually going to ask about that and how that planning went. How many extras were you working with when it came to that type of scene? Because obviously a lot of it is people being crushed in CGI obviously, but there are people running, there are people screaming, and then you have the dragon flying out. How many people are you operating with? Like, what is the scope of that?

KILNER: I think we had about something between 350 and 400 extras, but then we did defining. So then we’d just shoot a group, we’d direct them, you know, and once again, I sort of talk to them to really try and also get each person to have a little, a different story in their head. You want different reactions within the group, so it looks real. So we do, you know, “Okay, 400 people run towards the door. Okay, and now run again.” 400 people run, we mix them up, and they run towards the door again. I mean, Jim Clay is an incredible production designer, created these doors, these enormous doors, but they were only a third the size of the real doors. But we still put a camera at the back of the doors and have everyone running towards the doors, and we’re, you know, closing the doors. But, you know, I have to say, the supporting artists were great, and they really got into it [laughs], like they really enjoyed it.

Then the other thing we had to do, initially in the script, it said Aegon came in on horseback, and for various reasons, I think to do with the timing that we had to shoot the scene, that wasn't gonna be possible. So I looked at a lot of footage of military processions and things and I came up with the idea of the swords, so he goes through this archway of swords, and I loved the idea of the sound of the swords sort of going down each time as he walked through. We had a military consultant who came in and trained up the supporting artists who weren't actually from the military, in a day, to do that. I think some of the supporting artists were in shock because he was like, “Okay, again, again, again,” but it had to be done with military precision.

Well, they did a great job!

KILNER: They did brilliantly! But you know, then we also had to do that in three parts because we didn't have enough people. So when you watch some of these incredible military extravagances, it's a cast of thousands.

Yeah, that's very impressive. I also want to talk with you a little bit about your other two episodes because I have to say, Episode 4 and 5 are my favorite of the season. I really like those episodes, and I particularly want to talk to you about some of those scenes between Daemon (Matt Smith) and Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock/Emma D'Arcy) because that chemistry is just insanely palpable on screen. Can you talk about filming those two scenes, both of them in the brothel and then also of them dancing on the dance floor?

KILNER: Do you mean at the wedding?

Yes, at the wedding, pre-wedding dance, I guess.

KILNER: Yeah, the brothel, it was really interesting because I had to really think carefully about that space and what we were going to do because Game of Thrones was shot a while back before Me Too, and also before I kind of stepped into my own power, in a way, as a woman. In terms of really deciding how to shoot with the female gaze, I had to really question myself, “What is the female gaze? It's crazy. I'm a woman, but I don't know what the female gaze is.” So, I sort of had to come back to, “What do I want? How do I want to express what is happening in this brothel?”

Basically, I tend to, when I direct, I like to try and personalize things, and I've never been to a brothel, but I did, when I was about 22, I was working in theater, and I was working in Berlin, and my deputy stage manager took me to this crazy club. It was a gay club, and he's gay, and he took me down to the depths, through these corridors. He said, “You've got to come and see this. We're meant to be together, you can't really go in if you're just going to look, but just come with me,” and he sort of took me down all through these corridors and opened these doors, and we ended up in this room, and he put his arms around me and sort of pretended we were together. It was just an incredible moment, and it stayed with me forever because it was this atmosphere that was absolutely thick with sex, but it was sort of poetic and mysterious, and quite shocking, you know?

Milly Alcock and Matt Smith in House of the Dragon
Image via HBO

I mean, there's no shame in those places, everybody can do what they want. No one's judging you.

KILNER: Totally! And so I talked to Miguel [Sapochnik] and Ryan [Condal] about this experience, and they said, “Just do it, go with it.” So we just wanted to create this atmosphere of abandon and fun, but also intensity. And so I said to Matt [Smith] and Milly [Alcock], “I'm not going to bring you in until the day. I'm not gonna tell you what's happening.” I also worked with an incredible choreographer, Francesa Jaynes, and Dale [Mercer], as well, and they helped me work with all the people who wanted to be in the brothel, and they were really up for it, they were really excited about being in the show. And we created little stories for every single person. It was really important that they knew who they liked, who was the most powerful person in the room, what their story was, so it wasn't just people sort of wandering around or just having sex in the background. They were moving from person to person, we sort of wanted it to be like a dance.

So then, when Milly and Matt came in, they entered this situation and I said to them, “He's going to be like, ‘Pretend you’re with me,’” and then it sort of evolved from there. I think Milly was definitely shocked when she walked into that room [laughs], so it paid off. And then, those two, they work really well together. They were just a dream. They're just really wonderful actors. They want to be honest and truthful and find a connection.

I mean, you could definitely get that on the screen. And just looking at that other scene when they're at the wedding, in my mind, that's a similar situation, if not in scope, to Episode 9 where there are a lot of moving parts. That whole scene, from beginning to end, is a lot to watch because you've got people eating, you've got people dancing, you've got people flirting, you’ve got people being very angry at each other, and then it ends in that big implosion. Can you talk about filming that scene and making sure you have everybody's reactions and everybody gets their moment?

KILNER: Well, yeah, I was terrified when I read that scene. I think it was nine days or something, we took to shoot that scene. We had the royal table with Paddy [Considine] and Emily [Carey], all of that lot, up at the table, and we had all the food laid out, and of course, very quickly the food starts smelling, so people don't really want to eat. But I have sort of a pet peeve that when people are sitting at a table and there's food in front of them, I really want them to eat [laughs]. I just think there's something about eating on camera that grounds it, that makes it real. And also, how each person eats is very interesting because every human being eats in a different way, chews in a different way, you know, all of that. But so, we got that part of the wedding, which is all the relationships that are happening on that table. So we have to shoot everybody's eye line to everybody else on that table, and there was probably about, I remember about 10 to 12 people at that table. So, you've got to shoot Emily's glances, Rhaenyra’s glances to Alicent, Alicent’s glances to Rhaenyra, just the whole gamut, all of that.

And then, we had to do all these entrances. So we had the Sea Snake (Steve Toussaint) enter with all his people, some of the, I think it was, the Lannisters entering, you know, all these entrances. And they're really big in themselves because you want to make that to have scope and make it operatic, so you've got these great crane shots where you're above the door and following them in and revealing the room. And you've got to think about, how do you reveal the room, and how do you reveal each person in the room. So I think that's always so important is like, how we meet people and what they're doing at the time that we meet them. So, we did those lots of those shots on the crane.

Actually, even before that, I guess, we had to decide what the layout of the seating was going to be because in previous Game of Thrones, they had seating, the tables were just all in a line, and when I looked at that space, I really thought, “How can we get the most bang for our buck, and get the most depths and shots?” So, we spent a long time discussing that, but I really decided at the end that just having them in a line wasn't going to be very good. We needed a place for the dancing to happen, so we sort of spread them out more, which I think worked really well because we could look across people eating at tables from one side of the room all the way through to the other side of the room because we just wanted that scope.

Then the other thing that no one had really thought about is if they dance, and I'm like, “What is a dance from this world?” We hadn't really seen anything like that before, so, again, I worked with the choreographer, Francesa Jaynes. We went to Pineapple Studios and worked with some of her dancers and we thought, maybe we should think of weird birds, or something, prehistoric birds, like, what do they look like? How do they move? And so we evolved the dance from that, and I think when we first did it, it went a bit too far. It was a bit too contemporary dance [laughs], so we had to sort of bring it back a little bit. But it was really fun and exciting to evolve that, and then we had to teach it to Milly, and – well, we had to teach it to everybody – and then we got dancers, and I had to sort of push to get the dancers because I wanted good dancers.

Milly Alcock and Matt Smith in House of the Dragon
Image via HBO

Right, it needed to look good.

KILNER: Yeah, yeah, and then we had to work on the costumes because one of the movements of the cast, of the dancers, was to raise their hands up in the air and the costumes are very tight and period, and sometimes it doesn't allow them to do that. So we had to add patches of material under their arms, so they could raise their arms up in the air. Then we had to look at the shoes and what they were wearing, and were they able to move in the shoes, and stuff? But then, we had such a flow on the dance floor, and I really loved the shots where they all put their hands up in the air, and I just thought it sort of had just a great feeling. There's one shot where all the hands just rise into the air at the same time, I really enjoyed shooting that.

So, then I decided that everything on the dance floor should be shot with steady cam. So, you know, that was complicated, as well, because we're sort of doing 360-degree turns with a steady cam, and of course, the Royal Table is in view. So, all our principal performers had to be there, so they were very patient with us.

A lot of moving parts for that one.

KILNER: Yeah, there's nine days of that.

You guys did a great job. I think I remember when they previewed that scene and people were losing their minds because it was so good. I have to know, just from your personal perspective, obviously, it's not certain, do you know what the inciting act was that made Criston (Fabien Frankel) finally snap? Was it him seeing Rhaenyra on the dance floor? Was it something that Joffrey said that probably was the last straw? Do you have an idea?

KILNER: Everyone decides for themselves what it is, but I think Cole was – Cole comes from a sort of poor background and made this oath, and so he's in a terrible place because he believed that he could leave with Rhaenyra. He believed in that moment and the love, and he's utterly in love with her, and I'm not saying that's an excuse.

Right, no! [Laughs]

KILNER: But I think the whole time, what was hard about the wedding is you could have shot everybody's story and stayed on them for the whole wedding. You could have done the whole story of Criston Cole, like what Fabian was doing standing there the whole time watching Rhaenyra finally go with Daemon, and watching, and having [Joffrey] come and sort of take the piss, and rile him. Or, I don't know, it's everything that he was seeing made him feel like he lost himself, and I guess he's got like anger management issues [laughs], you know, and he was triggered. I don't know, Joffrey must have said something, and I think that was the last straw, but I think he had lost himself at that point. I think he literally had a break with reality because – and I think, the thing is, that it's hard for us to understand in those times what an oath meant. It was like an oath to serve the king was everything, and if you broke that oath, you die.

Solly McLeod and Fabien Frankel in House of the Dragon
Image via HBO

I mean, we kind of know that from the Game of Thrones show because Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) broke his oath, and that reputation lives with him for the rest of his life even if he saved, you know, thousands of people. It doesn't matter because he killed his king.

Yeah.

So I just want to talk a little bit about Season 2. I won't ask you for spoilers, I know you can’t give those, but I just want to know, how has it been navigating this new season with more of a linear storyline? Because obviously you're jumping back and forth, and you did both halves, so you did the first earlier half, and then you did the later half with the older actors. What has it been like without so much leaping around?

KILNER: It's really interesting because the scenes become meatier in a way because you're digging deeper into characters, and you've got this history. So, I mean, I really like to mine writing for everything that's underneath the words, and part of that, as well, is having the trust of the actors. Because you really want to try and put on screen, illustrate visually, what's really going on in their heart and their souls and their minds whilst they're speaking these words because often those two don't tally. So it's like, how do you – I think that's all I can say, really; you just go deeper with the characters and their relationships.

Yeah, for sure. Well, I just have one more question just to wrap it up. Is there a lesson or a takeaway you have from working on such a big project? Obviously, your other projects have been large, but this is like, you know, you've got the mythology, you've got like a whole other language, there's another show behind it. Is there something that you take away from it that you'll move on to future projects?

KILNER: I mean, everything is operatic, everything is huge, everything has this grand scale, but at the heart of it, it's the same thing. It's like a family dysfunction. It's like, how do these people connect? And in a way, every job I do comes with this sort of same thing, like who are these people, how are they trying to connect with the world? What is their story? How does it relate to us? But it's been such an epic journey, I don't want it to stop.