Thanks to Covid, one actor played both Cargyll twins in the House Of The Dragon finale
When Elliott Tittensor contracted Covid-19 during production, his brother Luke Tittensor stepped in
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One twin posing as their identical sibling has been a plot point in comedy television and film over the years, but HBO’s House Of The Dragon had their own opportunity for a twin switch up behind the scenes of the familial drama. It happened while filming the finale, when one of the Cargyll twins contracted COVID-19.
Twins Luke and Elliott Tittensor play Ser Arryk Cargyll and Ser Erryk Cargyll in the series, brothers who eventually become split by their opposing allegiances. Episode ten director Greg Yaitanes reveals to Entertainment Weekly that when Elliott had a COVID scare during filming the finale, the obvious move was to have his brother Luke step in as his substitute.
“There’s that scene, that big scene where Corlys [Steve Toussaint] comes down and they’re putting the markers on the table and the messenger comes in,” Yaitanes explains on EW’s West Of Westeros podcast. “It was a shot over two days and then one got COVID. [Elliott] got COVID, so we swapped him out with his brother.”
While one case of COVID-19 has been enough to shut down numerous productions over the last few years, the production was able to avert disastrous delays in filming thanks to the swap out. However, as if telling the difference between the names Arryk and Erryk wasn’t enough, the director says things got a little complicated while shooting the scenes with Luke Tittensor, Elliot Grihault (who plays Luke Velaryon), and Elliott Tittensor.
“The way this came to me was the game of telephone,” Yaitanes jokes.
Well, it’s time to rewatch the finale and see if you can tell the two twins apart. The first season of House Of The Dragon is currently available for streaming on HBO Max.
6 Comments
I don’t know if the characters being twins was supposed to be important or not, but… there didn’t really seem to be any difference between them, they were only really featured in one episode (1.09, where they’re searching for Aegon), we don’t know much about them… hell, I doubt most people could tell you which one was the one who ran off while the other one was downstairs fighting.
I *think* one had a fancier moustache on his beard with a little twirl but one of the biggest issues the show faced in it’s first season in choosing to do the “fast history” approach, was the inability to define side characters so I couldn’t tell you which was which or why (other than bad luck) the twins ended up opposing each other.
Giving them names that are pronounced the same way didn’t help either. There was a scene in ep 1.08 where Alicent is walking down a hall, and Erryk is talking to her, and Alicent calls him Arryk, and Erryk corrects her, and Alicent is like, oh right sorry. When that scene happened, I thought it was meant to illustrate that Alicent is distracted or just doesn’t really pay attention to who’s on the kingsguard besides her ageless BFF Cole.At that moment I had no idea there were twin A/Erryks, and didn’t even remember having seen this character before. It didn’t help that when Alicent calls him “Arryk” and he says “Erryk” both names are pronounced almost exactly the same; I wasn’t paying that close attention to the name she said, so when he corrected her, I was like, oh ok she said the wrong name (without really clocking that the name she said was almost the same).
I think they did a decent job within limited screen time, particularly with explaining Erryk’s motivation to change sides and help Rhaenys escape. Arryk is dutybound to serve his current masters, even fighting colleague Criston Cole to secure Aegon on Otto’s command. OTOH Erryk being Aegon’s personal bodyguard for a while now, is aware of his ‘interests’ and is utterly disgusted with him and the idea of him being king.
Cool, both did next-to-nothing in the entire series.
Is it off-topic to mention I’d love to be the meat in a Cargyll Sandwich?