House of The Dragon episode 8 ‘The Lord of the Tides’ was one of the most emotional chapters yet in the history of Game of Thrones. It leaves so many cues to the nature of the morally grey characters in the series, no one is truly evil, nor completely good. Paddy Considine’s performance as King Viserys was applauded by fans and critics alike, even by George R. R. Martin himself. However, there were more scenes like the ones included in episode 8 that got chopped off early in development, one of them involving King Viserys and Queen Aemma.
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In the most recent episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Paddy Considine revealed there was a deleted scene that involved Viserys in episode 1 right after Aemma and Baelon’s death.
He said, “I understood what that event did to him. I had an idea of what it did to him. Because you take on a character and I talked to you about acting so nothing pretentious. You go on a journey and because I’ve directed as well. When I direct, I’m very open to things moving. I think I’m like that as an actor as well. So I’m very receptive to things and people and events.”
“I knew that the death of Aemma would devastate Viserys, but until we shot it and I worked with Sian for what was just a few days, what determined it was what we shot was 10 times more brutal than what you saw. He was 10 times more devastated than what you saw. I mean he was inconsolable.”
He continued, “There’s this scene that didn’t make the cut where I’m sitting on the bed, there’s blood on the bed, and I’ve got the dagger. One of the maesters brings Baelon to me and I can’t even look at him. I think he comes to tell me that Baelon hasn’t lived. So he’s hit with this double whack of devastation of his wife and then the kid. Then there was this sense of like, “Huh, you know what, the cruel twist of fate.” I’m like I’m not surprised. “
“And they cut it, and probably rightly so because it just cuts then to the funeral pyre. That’s probably the right choice really but it was just the impact of those scenes. The amount of emotion that we put into it, the amount of effort and emotion Sian put into it, she left a kind of imprint everywhere.”
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