As Game of Thrones fans prepare for the return of House of the Dragon, the memory of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is still very potent. The show’s more intimate window on Westeros life, beyond castles and crowns and piles of gold, was anchored by its endearingly awkward hero, Ser Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey)—”Dunk” to his friends. We first meet the character as he’s burying the elderly knight who trained him, and he fumbles with what to say at the makeshift grave site.
As A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms progresses, we see Dunk endure a lot of life lessons in a very short period of time. By the time episode four, titled “Seven,” rolls around, he’s about to enter the fight of his life after being unjustly accused of a crime. He prizes honor above all, something that’s become more clear with every dishonorable act that he witnesses. But he needs a certain number of men to back him up in his trial by combat, and survival is not guaranteed. He’ll need to be very convincing to find one more champion—a “true knight”—and it requires the kind of eloquence we’re not sure Dunk is capable of.
Fortunately, he ends up delivering the speech of his life, so powerful that even a very loud fart from the crowd doesn’t dilute the message too much. In a new interview with Variety that focuses on the directing choices made in episode four, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms creator Ira Parker, director Sarah Adina Smith, and star Claffey talked about the scene.
The “secret goal,” Parker noted, was “to have Dunk finally do what he said he couldn’t do in the first episode, which is find the right words. And he finally does it.”
The cinematography was carefully planned to emphasize the gravity of the moment. “I wanted him to feel small and lonely and powerless to start,” Smith explained, but that begins to shift as Dunk becomes more passionate. “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.”
Dunk delivers the speech when he’s on horseback, surrounded by a huge audience. Those complications also made for more of a challenge for Claffey as he was performing it. “It wasn’t just that one camera and myself,” he explained. “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!’”
It did indeed turn out awesome—and Dunk got his true knight, to boot. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has a second season coming in 2027.
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