A supervisor on House of the Dragon revealed that the team dubbed Daemon’s dragon Caraxes a ‘Failed White Boy Rapper’ – but why?
House of the Dragon needed to bring more life to its namesake creatures than its sister-series Game of Thrones, with the production team choosing to design each as their own individual character and even going as far as to label one a ‘Failed White Boy Rapper’.
House of the Dragon’s dragon dubbed ‘Failed White Boy Rapper’
From the design of its scales to the deafening tones of its roar, each dragon in House of the Dragon was meticulously crafted by a team of experts and phenomenal artists.
In a recent interview with Collider, costume designer Jany Temime, prosthetics head Sarah Gower, and sound supervisor Al Sirkett discussed how they brought the enormous dragons to life in the hit HBO series.
It turns out that the secret was to view each dragon as its own individual character, just like their human riders, instead of being just a winged CGI set piece like in many of their fleeting appearances in Game of Thrones.
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“A lot of people would think about the dragons and it’s just a big roar, and [Paula Fairfield, sound designer on GOT] bought so much more to it than that. The descriptions that Ryan and Miguel gave for these characters, for these dragon characters, were never, ‘I want the dragon to be like this.’ They would describe it in human terms.”
Sirkett then hilariously revealed that Prince Daemon’s dragon Caraxes was “described by Miguel one meeting as the failed white boy rapper.”
Elaborating on the unusual, but distinct characterization, the veteran filmmaker added how Caraxes “thinks he’s the coolest guy on the block, just thinks he’s just full of it, he’s so fantastic and amazing, but he’s not.”
“He’s a bit of an idiot. Nobody really likes him and none of the other dragons really want to hang out with him. And that was it, and Paula came back and every little thing like the roar was just — but it wasn’t funny what the sounds that she was creating [were], but the textures that she used were slightly off-key and weren’t, I think, what people would have expected, but that’s what she brought to the game.”
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The ‘Failed White Boy Rapper’ has less time to shine in season 2
Unfortunately, the ‘Failed White Boy Rapper’ Caraxes will have notably less time to shine in House of the Dragon’s second broadcast because season 2 has had its episode count cut short from 10 down to just eight.
Director Clare Kilner explained that the reason why House of the Dragon season 2 will be shorter than its debut season is because this will improve the overall pacing of the story.
“There are eight wonderful episodes with so much happening in every episode, and we have trouble, at times, bringing them down to one hour. Ryan’s decision was to give it a good opening and a good ending, and they’re jam-packed with emotional and visually exciting events.”
Season 2 is still expected to debut in 2024 despite the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, with George R. R. Martin also claiming that the show will need at least four seasons to do the original source material justice.
“George and Ryan are going to meet after the writers strike. They had originally planned to meet before the strike took place and that was to figure out at what point the series itself was going to end. Is it four seasons? I don’t think from where I sit at this point will be any less than four. But could be more. We’ll see.”
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