House of the Dragon showrunners Miguel Sapochnik and Ryan Condal talk about their biggest influences for the series outside GOT.
Some of the biggest influences for House of the Dragon outside of Game of Thrones unsurprisingly come from similar political dramas about power grabs and machiavellian scheming.
Showrunners Miguel Sapochnik and Ryan Condal recently spoke with ET on the influence that shows such as Succession and The Crown had on their writer’s room.
“The shows we talked about the most in the writers’ room were Succession and The Crown,” Condal said of the discussions that went “beyond Game of Thrones, which was talked about all the time.”
“So, in terms of story references, tonal references, dramatic rhythms and pacing. You know, structuring a story,” Condal says that both of the HBO series were “talked about all the time,” with the executive producer adding that they’re “all big fans of [Succession].”
The two executive producers also went on to talk about one scene from Game of Thrones that particularly inspired them.
“[It’s] funny, ‘cause when you actually look it up, ‘chaos is a ladder’ was a scene that was written when the episode was too short and they had to write something extra to fill in the episode,” Sapochnik says. “And so, it was a scene that had almost nothing to do with the show, but somehow became a perfect kind of way of describing the tonality of how the show ended up.”
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“I think those are the two most important things that made that show what it was,” Sapochnik says, referring to the recognizable tone and voice of Game of Thrones.
Additionally, “the voice of the show, which I think began with George, but then was adapted for the screen by David and Dan,” Condal continues. “Those two things, I think, are the things that most orient people into that world. And those were the things we had to recreate first, if we had any hope of any success.”
