Fabien Frankel shows Criston Cole's true nature on 'House of the Dragon' (2024)

Warning: This article contains spoilers from House of the Dragon season 1, episode 5.

Fabien Frankel, the England-born actor behind Ser Criston Cole on House of the Dragon, thinks he understands the character a whole lot more these days on the press tour for the show than he did when he shot it back in 2021. The really good journalists, likely the ones completely steeped in the lore of Game of Thrones, will ask the kind of questions that leave him with far more enlightened answers for when he has to chime in for the next interview.

"It's kind of like seeing a shrink for your character," Frankel, 28, jokes as he sips a beer from his London apartment one September evening.

When he actually filmed sequences as Criston, the common-born Dornish knight of the Kingsguard, hand-selected by Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen (Milly Alco*ck) as her bodyguard, he figured out the character in real time. For instance, "You don't know how a scene's gonna play out between Daemon" — Matt Smith's character — "and Criston Cole until you're in it," he explains. "There's only so much preparation you can do. It's only now upon reflection that I'm able to really understand what I was thinking. It is a really weird thing."

Looking back, with the wisdom gleaned from dozens of these so-called press therapy sessions, Frankel describes Criston as impulsive and more reactionary than he is premeditated. "I don't think there's anything premeditated about him, at least in the beginning of the show," the actor says as a matter of fact. It helps explain a moment that not only plunged a big wedding scene in episode 5 into mayhem but marked a pivotal shift in the conflict to come.

"He's very much set up as one thing, and as the show goes on, changes a great deal. That was what was exciting to me," Frankel says. "He's very much set up as a noble, well-meaning knight there to protect Rhaenyra. And for those who've read the book, he isn't that by any means."

Criston, on duty in the Kingsguard, was forced to stand guard over the welcome feast for the wedding of Rhaenyra and Laenor Velaryon (Theo Nate), a strategic match meant to unite House Targaryen and House Velaryon by blood. Initially, the director staged Criston much more front and center in the scene, but Frankel pushed back.

Earlier in the episode, Criston had approached Rhaenyra, who's been his secret lover ever since he first broke his vows and slept with her the night of Daemon's return to King's Landing. Criston wanted to run away with her, shed both of their titles to escape across the sea to Essos, where they could marry for love and not duty. Rhaenyra rejected his offer, leaving Criston with the knowledge that his own honor as a chaste knight has been spoiled.

"I don't think he's searching for any form of conflict at this wedding at all," Frankel remarks. "If anything, he wants to be as far away as humanly possible." But conflict finds Criston in his emotionally raw state.

Laenor's lover, Joffrey Lonmouth (Solly McLeod), known as the Knight of Kisses, approaches the jilted swordsman. Rhaenyra and Laenor made an agreement to fulfill their duties to the crown by marrying and producing heirs, while allowing each other to pursue their true desires behind closed doors. Joffrey wants Criston to swear to protect that arrangement and their consorts, sending Criston spiraling into a rage. The room erupts into a frenzy as the knight of the Kingsguard, in a blind rage, beats Joffrey to death with his bare hands in the midst of the celebration.

The death, which plays out in different circ*mstances than in the source material of George R.R. Martin's Fire and Blood, was the build-up of everything that preceded the bloodshed, Frankel says. "I don't think it's because [Rhaenyra] says she won't go away with him. I think it's the way in which she says she won't go away with him. That scene could so easily have been written [as] he asks her to run away with him, she understands why he feels this way, she can't give up her role as queen, but what she will offer him is an out if he would like to leave the Kingsguard. That very much could be the scenario that happens. It isn't. That to me is very interesting. She chose to keep him there. She made him stand through that wedding. That's where the animosity builds."

That reactionary nature became clear to Frankel from the beginning of the process. He brings up the tourney scenes of episode 1 when Criston, a skilled common-born fighter, gained the eye of the crown by defeating Prince Daemon Targaryen in a joust and combat. Frankel didn't know Smith, in character, would slap Criston's hand away after accepting defeat. He decided then that would be Criston's impulse for asking Rhaenyra for her favor as a way of ticking off Daemon. It's also important to note, Frankel adds, that Criston strikes Daemon in the back during that tourney fight — something the actor's own mother was quick to point out as she watched the premiere.

"My mum's like, 'You only really get to see his true colors in this first episode,'" Frankel says. "[Episodes] 2, 3, and 4, he's very much still in this one vein of [being] quite noble and respectful. And actually, that's just not what he is.'"

Miguel Sapochnik, a showrunner on House of the Dragon with co-creator Ryan Condal, told Frankel he always thought of Criston as a "thug." They had multiple conversations about "how he would lose his thuggishness as the show went on and he developed an understanding of the Machiavellian politics of this world," Frankel recalls. The actor also wanted to play into the racial politics of being a Dornishman in Westeros, likening the Dornish to the Irish in England during the mid 1900s. "It really gave me something I dug into a lot," he says.

This is by far more character study than he's had to think about compared to some of his earlier work, like his first movie role in Last Christmas (opposite Game of Thrones vet Emilia Clarke) and Netflix series The Serpent. But he's enjoying it, especially now as change is coming for his character and the show at large.

The ending of episode 5 marks the halfway point in House of the Dragon's first season. It also means we're jumping ahead in time to see the adult versions of Rhaenyra and Queen Alicent, to be played by Emma D'Arcy and Olivia Cooke. Viewers get a tease when Alicent (still played by Emily Carey in episode 5), stops Criston from killing himself after the wedding ordeal. Alliances are about to shift.

"I f---ing love that, in a week's time, the audience is gonna very much change their opinion of him," Frankel says. "I think that Criston is, in a lot of ways, a fly on the wall, but without the Machiavellian nature of a character like Otto" — played by Rhys Ifans. "Otto is constantly planning and plotting and ears-to-the-ground. Criston Cole is ears-to-the-ground, but there's no planning and plotting going on. You have a very interesting dynamic of someone who is overhearing every conversation that is happening, be it when he's on the side of Rhaenyra or on the side of any of the other characters. And slowly as the show goes on — and long may [it] continue, I hope, into many more seasons for HBO — Criston Cole I believe, will become a very integral part of the Dance of the Dragons."

House of the Dragon airs Sundays on HBO and streams on HBO Max.

Listen to more EW's interview with Fabien Frankel on Game of Thrones podcast West of Westeros. Subscribe for more exclusive interviews with the cast and crew of House of the Dragon.

Related content:

• House of the Dragon recap: Another bloody wedding
• How House of the Dragon clarifies a lingering mystery from Fire and Blood
• House of the Dragon adds to the history of the catspaw dagger in Game of Thrones
• House of the Dragon deleted scenes show Alicent's wedding and big Rhaenyra blowout