Westeros

GRRM has finally gotten his wish to break some news regarding House of the Dragon, revealing that British actor Fabien Frankel has been cast in the role of Criston Cole, a knight who will remembered (and reviled) in later days as the Kingmaker. A classically-trained actor who attended RADA and LAMBDA, he is a relative newcomer with his first credits in 2019 (the Emilia Clarke romcom Last Christmas, no less!) Most recently he has appeared in The Serpent, a BBC-Netflix co-production.

Fabien Frankel in Gone Today. Here Tomorrow.

GRRM’s remarks on the role of Cole is interesting if it is indicative of the fact that the writing team is trying to keep that aspect of the character’s depiction in Fire and Blood (Amazon affiliate):

It will be interesting to see how that plays out on screen.

Edited on April 22nd: A detail that GRRM did not include, but which outlets that received a press release did—such as Variety—is the specification of Cole as being “of Dornish descent”, a detail not drawn from Fire and Blood. Given that Cole was from the Dornish Marches, it’s not at all unlikely that there would have been Dornish blood somewhere in his background, but foregrounding it in the show and the press release is an interesting choice.