That new Game Of Thrones spin-off we keep forgetting about has cast its stars
Game Of Thrones: A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight has cast its Hedge Knight—and his young squire, Egg
Somehow, it keeps slipping our minds that there are now two official Game Of Thrones prequel spin-offs in active work at the moment—possibly due to some sort of critical colon deficiency after all the times we’ve typed out Game Of Thrones: A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, the name of the most recent project. (Alongside the already established House Of The Dragon, which returns this summer on June 16.) Now, at least, we’ll have a couple of faces to attach to the project, as Variety reports this weekend that the show has cast its stars, in the form of Peter Claffey and Dexter Sol Ansell, who’ll be playing TV versions of beloved George R.R. Martin characters Dunk and Egg.
Ansell, interestingly, is the more experienced actor—at least, as counted by credits—despite the fact that he’s all of 10 years old at present. He had his first regular gig when he was 4, appearing on long-running British soap Emmerdale; American audiences would have most recently seen him as the young version of future Donald Sutherland character Coriolanus Snow in The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes. Claffey, meanwhile, is a former professional rugby player who made the move to acting a few years back, appearing in a regular role in British horror series Wreck. He does, we’re moved to note, possess one of the major physical features of the written version of Ser Duncan The Tall, which is that he’s, uh… Tall. (6'4", according to his Ultimate Rugby profile.) (And no, we weren’t expecting to consult Ultimate Rugby for Westeros casting news today, either.) Now the character of Dunk is described in the “Dunk & Egg” stories as actually being roughly 6'11", but it’s amazing what you can do with cameras these days.
HBO has already green-lit the project, which takes place roughly 90 years before the events of Game Of Thrones. (So just about halfway between House Of The Dragon and the original show.) Based off a series of three novellas Martin published between 1998 and 2010, the show will tell the story of Ser Duncan, a low-born squire who sneaks his way into a tournament while pretending to be an actual knight, before ultimately becoming one of Westeros’ most famed heroes, frequently accompanied by his own squire, Egg. No word yet on when the series will go into production, or when we can expect to see the duo on the screen.