The actor confessed he “burst into tears” over the deteriorating appearance of his character.
House of the Dragon’s original leading man, Paddy Considine, has been reflecting on his final moments on the series having watched back his final scene playing what he described as “the greatest character I’ve ever played.” Viserys, seen by many as the heart of the show as a good man in an almost impossible situation, was seen in failing health through much of the series due to an infection garnered from a wound that wouldn’t heal – causing a form of what he described as “leprosy” while on the West of Westeros podcast – giving his character a tragic sense of inevitable doom. Unlike the majority of the deaths from its predecessor, Game of Thrones, viewers saw this one coming – and that didn’t make it any easier.
Considine himself, as well as his immediate family, included themselves in that number, with the actor revealing on The Adam Buxton Podcast that his wife and daughter were upset while watching the scene and his wife urging him to simply watch the conclusion of the scene.
“I didn’t watch episode eight but my wife had watched it, and my daughter, and they were pretty upset with it. My wife said, ‘Just watch the end. Years ago, I’d watched my dad die of cancer and he just went downhill rapidly from being diagnosed to being on death’s door. You know, he became skeletal so rapidly. So, when [my wife] showed me that end thing and my face came up I just burst into tears because I looked the image of my dad when he was dying, the image of him, and it was shocking. It was really, really shocking to me.I’d put so much of my mum’s characteristics into this character, Viserys, but when I saw that I thought ‘That’s my dad’ and it was terrifying. So, it was pretty impactful stuff. The King Viserys character in House of the Dragon, I think that’s probably the greatest character I’ve ever played in my eyes. The story was right. The character was right.”
The HBO fantasy epic series brought the curtain down on its highly popular first season earlier this year, and the second season is currently in pre-production. The premiere of the first season broke HBO’s viewership records with almost 10 million viewers tuning in to see the return to Westeros. House of the Dragon is a series inspired by the book Fire & Blood by A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin, which tells the story of the legendary, and infamous, Targaryen family – and the civil war which brought down their once great house.
