House of the Dragon season 3 stars reveal the biggest challenges filming the Battle of the Gullet

There was real risk in The Battle of the Gullet

House of the Dragon season 3 opens with an epic battle as Lord Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint) and his bastard son Alyn of Hull (Abubakar Salim) lead Rhaenyra Targaryen’s navy in a battle against the Triarchy fleet attempting to break her blockade of King’s Landing. In George R.R. Martin’s books, the Battle of the Gullet is the bloodiest naval battle in the history of Westeros, and HBO spared no expense when producing the glorious spectacle. The set involved four boats, a dry tank, a wet tank, an underwater tank, and three million liters of water.

The actors trained for battle, learned complex fight choreography, and even learned some nautical terms to make the Battle of the Gullet as dramatic as possible. But while they worried about not slipping while wearing armor and making sure they stayed in focus for the shots, they also had one really gross concern.

In a virtual interview, Salim and Toussaint tell Polygon that the hardest thing about filming he Battle of the Gullet was not drinking the water splashing around the part of the ship The Queen That Never Was that was positioned in the wet tank.

“The water was very deep, so they had all these SCUBA guys hanging around in case one of us fell in and were getting into trouble,” Toussaint said. “But those guys stayed in that water for the whole day. They didn’t get out for bodily functions, if you know what I mean.”

Some people took precautions in case they were drinking a diver’s pee.

“I remember a stunt guy coming up to me and being like, 'Did any of that water go into your mouth?'” Salim said. “I don’t know, because I’m in the middle of it, and he was saying, 'Drink Coke. Coke will kill everything. It’s going to be good.' So that was the really seriously hard part of filming the Gullet.”

Harry Collett is used to staying safe and dry while focusing on political intrigue as Prince Jacaerys Velaryon, so he also struggled with getting soaked filming scenes where Jace rides his dragon in the battle.

“It was very hard trying to keep my eyes open and not ingest too much water and cough,” Collett tells Polygon. “I was wearing Jace’s dragon-riding gloves in the scene, and they reacted with the water and made my hands blue and the medic ran over to me because she thought I had hypothermia. It was very challenging, but I'd never done anything like that before, so it was very cool.”

Toussaint started preparing for the Battle of the Gullet soon after season 2 wrapped when he met Abigail Thorn, who plays the Triarchy admiral Sharako Lohar.

“Abigail said to me, ‘I'm in training because I want to do action movies and stuff like that, and I know we've got this battle to do,’ and that scared me because Abigail is in great shape anyway,” he says. “Then I started training too because I didn't want to be the fat bloke swinging a sword at this incredibly fit person. At least I didn't let myself down physically.”

While the actors on the ships spent weeks rehearsing together and filmed their scenes in chronological order, Collett and Bethany Antonia, who plays Jace’s betrothed and fellow dragonrider Baela Targaryen, filmed their parts isolated even from each other.

“We would have chats with the directors, but [it was challenging] trying to actually get our heads around what was happening underneath us without getting to see that,” Antonia says. “It hadn’t even been shot when we shot the above stuff.”

When the pieces came together, they formed one of the most impressive action sequences in television history. It’s a momentous event for the Targaryen war of succession and House of the Dragon as a show, exceeding even the high standard for epic battles set by Game of Thrones.

---

House of the Dragon season 3 premieres on HBO on June 21. New episodes release Sundays through Aug. 9.