‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Premiere Explained by Peter Claffey and Dexter Sol Ansell (Exclusive)

The tales of Dunk and Egg have begun. Peter Claffey and Dexter Sol Ansell made their debuts as Ser Duncan the Tall and his squire, Egg, in the series premiere of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms on Sunday, January 18, on HBO.

The episode introduced Dunk at the end of his mentor, hedge knight Ser Arlan of Pennytree’s (Danny Webb), life. His death prompts Dunk to find a tournament in which he can prove himself a true knight, but he’ll need someone to vouch for him to get into the tourney at Ashford. He meets Egg in a town about a day’s ride from Ashford, and he reluctantly takes him on as a squire by the end of the episode.

Claffey and Ansell got to know each other by spending a lot of time at an arcade near the set of the Game of Thrones spinoff, which films in Ireland (Season 2 is in production now). Their playful dynamic is easily seen onscreen, and even their height differences stop them from seeing each other well.

“I had a neckache from looking up at Dunk the whole way through,” Ansell jokes in the video interview above. As Claffey jokes back, “I had a neckache from looking down at you!”

Claffey, 6’5″, towers over 11-year-old Ansell, but that’s a detail straight out of the books (fun fact: Dunk is an ancestor of Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones). Dunk’s height makes for some entertaining physical comedy in the series. In Episode 1, for example, Dunk bonks his head on a doorframe in front of someone he wants to impress. He can’t help but be a little silly. It’s part of the character’s inherent innocence.

“George [R. R. Martin] and Ira [Parker, showrunner and executive producer] are so close and have such a great relationship that the translation from book to screenplay was a combined effort,” Claffey explains. “They wanted to have those bits of physical comedy as well.”

“When we started shooting as well, they were adamant that it was going to have a different feel. Dunk has a tendency to lean into the comedic, but not by choice. He’s meeting a diverse selection of different people and inherently has quite funny encounters with them, just out of his own insecurity and anxiety. We leaned into that as much as we possibly could.”

“You deal with so many highborn people [in Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon], I think it’s more relatable for most audiences to see somebody of the smallfolk. You find more comedy with those interactions.”

Dunk wants to be a noble knight, but Ansell says that Egg isn’t immediately inspired by him upon first meeting in the stables at the inn.

“Egg, he just wants to get with someone. First of all, he doesn’t really care who it is. He just wants to go [to Ashford] with someone,” Ansell explains, adding, “He doesn’t feel like he’s going to have this massive thing and have a proper relationship with him; he just wants to go off. But then when they get together, and when they spend more time together, they really bond and really make a good relationship.”

Steffan Hill / HBO

Finding a pair that could really make that bond clear was the casting department’s most important job, and they nailed it. Fans online have said that it feels like they took Martin’s hedge knight novellas, shook them, and the characters fell out in the form of these actors. Parker reveals the moment on set that gave him the same feeling. It was the moment when Dunk and Egg met.

“I took a picture of it on my phone, which I never do on set because if I lose my phone or if somebody steals it, I don’t want it, you know. But it was when Dunk rides up outside the inn, and Egg comes out from the stables,” Parker shares. “There was this sort of ghostly otherworldliness to Egg in that moment. This is going to maybe sound weird given the universe that I’m living in, but it felt like when we arrived at Privet Drive for the first time in the Harry Potter movies, and those lights start going off, and you’re just like, ‘Oh, it’s like the book.’ I remember this. It just gave me a really warm, good feeling. The two of them meeting for the first time, it felt right.”

Learn more about the first episode, including that hilarious moment when the Game of Thrones theme song is teased but is immediately cut off by a gross moment with Dunk, in the full video interview above.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Sundays, 10/9c, HBO