It’s a scene that launched a thousand memes, and gave goosebumps to even the most casual “Game of Thrones” fans.“A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” Episode 4, “Seven.” Ser Duncan the Tall, played by Peter Claffey, sits atop a horse as the lords of Westeros look down at him. One knight short for the trial of seven that will determine if he is freed or if he will be mutilated by the crown, Dunk appeals to the honor of all knights present, asking them to take up his cause.When the only response he gets is a knight passing gas, he bellows, “Has courage deserted the noble houses of Westeros? I will not believe it is so. Are there no true knights among you?!” Just then, the gates to the list field open and in rides Baelor Targaryen (Bertie Carvel), heir to the throne, agreeing to join Dunk’s side. The “Game of Thrones” theme swells in the background as the episode cuts to black.It’s an epic scene that has become a defining moment for the show.“That fucking moment, it changes him,” says the episode’s director, Sarah Adina Smith. “He becomes a knight himself, and he will stand for honor when no one else will.”Likewise, series co-creator and showrunner Ira Parker says the speech is not about Dunk “pitying himself,” but rather about forcing the lords to examine their own selfish behavior.“He’s saying, ‘I think we’re all better than this,’” Parker says. “I think decency without naivety is important. I think that’s a big Dunk takeaway from Season 1, and certainly from that scene, is that you can have your morals and your code, but that doesn’t mean that you can just bury your head in the sand and not take into account the way other people interact with the world.”And like Dunk, the scene was a culmination of a long journey for Claffey as well. This speech was one of the scenes he read during his auditions for the show. Claffey says he was incredibly nervous going into shooting it, given not only its pivotal nature in the series but the scale of the production around him.“It wasn’t just that one camera and myself,” he says, but rather trying to ride a horse while reciting the monologue with nearly every actor on the set focused solely on him. “All of that impacts it hugely. It impacts that whole atmosphere, and really gets into your soul.”But Claffey has been a massive fan of the fantasy genre since he was a boy, and he knew this was his chance to have the kind of memorable moment that he himself had always loved.“I could have very easily let it get into my head, all these different nuts and bolts that I have to incorporate into it, rather than just being like, ‘This is going to be fucking awesome!’” he says. “This is a chance to actually be really, really cool and live in that sort of fantasy world that I’ve been such an enormous, passionate fan of since as far back as I can remember.”Parker knew how long Claffey had been sitting with this scene, and knew enough to stay out of his head and not try to influence his performance. “His instincts are going to be correct, and I know he’s going to get it there,” he says.Smith also saw how the moment was weighing on Claffey, so she suggested they just get one take in the can so that he could relax, which he did. She also credits Claffey’s skill in horsemanship with allowing her to shoot his coverage without much concern for the horse’s movements relative to the camera.“Sarah was such a champion,” Claffey says. “She was so brilliant at really kind of getting into my headspace. It was almost like she was doing the speech from behind the camera herself.”
Smith says that witnessing Claffey’s performance was a “privilege.”“I think it was take three or four, and I believe Ira was near me at the monitor,” she says. “I think the entire cast and crew, we all had goosebumps. You could feel it in the air. And I turned to Ira and I said, ‘I think we just watched the birth of a movie star.’ It just was this crazy, intense moment.”The intensity of the moment is further heightened by Smith’s masterful direction. While she is certainly no novice, Smith says that getting to step into the world of “Game of Thrones” was “a director’s dream come true.”“It brought out the kid in me,” she says. “In a lot of ways you’re just like, ‘This is what you picture when you close your eyes as a child and you imagine what a movie set would be.’ I think that on this job more than any other job, I was kind of smiling like an idiot most days because it was that fun.”
But that inner child still had to contend with a tremendous amount of prep work to make sure everything ran smoothly on the day of the shoot.“For me, directing is always kind of a cross between a sport and an art,” she says. “There’s a real adrenaline element to it. It’s super physical. And this was a crazy good example of that, because it was such a physical shoot in the mud on the list field and the changing weather and the horses and the armor and the amount of background and everything we were dealing with. So it really felt like we were all kind of going to battle together to achieve it.”
She and Parker agreed that the scene needed to start with the audience feeling Dunk had basically no hope. As it begins, the camera is nearly at eye level with Dunk, while you see the lords of Westeros looking down on him from above.“I wanted him to feel small and lonely and powerless to start,” Smith says.But as Dunk gets angrier as the other knights mock him, the camera moves down to look up at him, almost in admiration. “I wanted the camera to help tell that story too, so that when he really finds his true voice in all of its glory, the camera is also giving him his due power in this moment,” Smith says.Although Dunk is essentially the only one to speak in this scene, he is not the only person featured. Smith and Parker both say that the season is ultimately the story of fathers and sons, like Egg and Maekar, Dunk and Ser Arlan, etc. As Dunk says the lords’ sons will follow their examples, the camera cuts to the Lannisters, the Baratheons and finally the Targaryens — including Egg — watching him speak.Fans of “Game of Thrones” no doubt know that each of these houses will play pivotal, dark and even bloody roles in the future of Westeros.“I really wanted to emphasize fathers and sons … and this idea of what you pass down and what you stand for, not just yourself, but generationally,” Smith says. “In these feudal and oligarchical societies, power is maintained by this false mythology that those who have it have it righteously.”The cinematography also emphasizes what Parker describes as the “secret goal” of the scene. “It was to have Dunk finally do what he said he couldn’t do in the first episode, which is find the right words,” he says. “And he finally does it.”