Drogon the dragon is sexy. If you doubt me, read on. Game of Thrones sound designer Paula Fairfield chatted with WYNC’s Radiolab about how she created Drogon’s voice, and it’s a bit racy.
We have to start by reminding everyone that Daenerys named Drogo after Khal Drogo, her ruggedly handsome Dothraki husband. Drogon is moody and unpredictable, but of Daenerys’ three dragons (the others being Viserion and Rhaegal), he is one most intimately connected with her, and certainly her favorite. He’s the one who burned the slavers in “And Now His Watch Is Ended,” he’s the one she rides through the sky, and so on.
Fairfield sees the heart of Khal Drogo alive inside Drogon. To honor him, she designed his early clicks and chirps to sound almost flirtatious.
I have sounds I might choose simply by certain personality traits that I want to put forward. So in the case of Drogon—she named that dragon after Khal Drogo, her hot, late husband—and so Drogon is like her lover. He’s whistling at her all the time, he’s looking at her butt and going ‘ooh, baby.’
Get an earful of that below:
As Drogon matured and grew to monumental proportions, Fairfield has made sure to adjust how the mythical creature interacts with Daenerys. He doesn’t click and chirp so much any more, but rather purrs like a cat when he and Daenerys are near each other. But Fairfield didn’t use a cat’s purr for reference, but rather the sounds of tortoises having noisy sex.
The groan of the male [tortoise] actually became—with some work and adjustments and stuff—the source for Drogon’s purr with Daenerys. The funny thing about the purr with Drogon was watching people watching [the show] and giggling when they heard it, but not really knowing why. To me it’s because it had that essence—that kind of sensual, sexual essence.
You can hear some of that in this scene from season 5:
And there you have it. Drogon, who has the testosterone-drenched essence of Khal Drogo in his name and humping reptiles in his voice, must surely be the sexiest fictional dragon of all time.
You can hear the full interview, including snippets of those tortoises, below — the Paula Fairfield discussion starts around 20:40. She also reveals that she used the sound of dragonfly wings for the sound Drogon’s tail makes as it whistles through the air. She pulls from all over.
I’ll never listen to Drogon the same way again.
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