Westeros

The latest episode of The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of podcast, co-hosted by House of the Dragon show runner Ryan Condal and his friend and fellow prop collector David Mandel—whose credits include Seinfeld, Veep, and White House Plumbers—features prosthetics artist Waldo Mason, who joins them to discuss his career, creative process, and some behind-the-scenes teases from House of the Dragon Season 3 where he works as the lead makeup special effects artist.

Waldo Mason is a legendary figure in prosthetics, with a career spanning over thirty years. His work has brought creatures, wounds, and faces to life in films like Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, the Harry Potter series, Game of Thrones, and Rogue One. He’s also a worked on a number of Ridley Scott productions going back to Gladiator (he has some frank remarks to make about a certain star’s behavior on set at the time), as well as Kingdom of Heaven and Prometheus.

In the episode, there’s a fun moment where Ryan hints there’s something in Season 3 he’d like to “liberate” for his own collection—prompting Waldo to laugh and ask, “Well, is it large?” Apparently not, but Ryan and he would confer about there maybe needing to be two of what object he was interested in. Waldo also shares that he was particularly eager to sculpt two specific heads this season. One didn’t appear in the initial brief, to his disappointment—but it sounds like it made it into the revised plan after all. See below for our guess, and beware spoilers drawn from Fire and Blood!

The one he expected and got, we’re guessing, is a certain Hightower… but what about the one that he expected but didn’t see initially? Well, thinking about it, we know of one notable historical character who gets themselves beheaded who’s played by someone who has been seen on the show, but has yet to be confirmed as returning (that we know of at this moment) and that would be Sir Simon Russell Beale, aka Ser Simon Strong. A very famous name on stage and screen, we know many people on the show were delighted by his involvement in the show, not to mention fans (such as us!) who thought he was terrific. But technically, they could go without using him again if they needed to, and he’s doubtless someone who likes to have various committments in play. So perhaps there was uncertainty that Strong would make an appearance when Mason began work on the season, and then a revision to scripts revealed that he was, in fact, on board?

That is, in any case, just a guess!