One of the most respectable sequences of the entire season was in House of the Dragon’s eighth episode. An ill Viserys is making his way to the Iron Throne, And Daemon helps him to get up the stairs. Since the pair has had ups and downs throughout the series, it has emotional resonance when Viserys’ (Paddy Considine) crown falls off his head and Daemon (Matt Smith) stoops to pick it up.
However, as episode director Geeta Patel explained in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, that was not how they intended the sequence to go.
When we were shooting, I was talking about rehearsals. On the first day, the crown fell off Paddy’s head, and Matt picked it up, and we moved on. We haven’t stopped filming. When Patel, Smith, and Considine finished filming, they decided to do a few more takes. We decided to shoot both ways, with the crown falling and the crown not falling.
Every time the crown fell, all of us gasped. I was so thankful that the incident had happened that the crown had failed because it proved, at least for me, a relatively powerful moment and a turning point for a plot that started in the pilot: “Hey, I want your crown and in the end here I will put the crown back on your head and help you to ascend the throne.”
When the whole family was at Dinner, It included a toast from Daemon. However, the actors and the director sensed something unique about the climactic climax throughout the rehearsal. The team shot both Daemon’s speech and the crown scene and decided to cut Daemon’s toast while keeping the improvised shot.
