“It was rough. It felt real s–tty” Sara Hess says about filming House of the Dragon Season 2 during Hollywood strikes

House of the Dragon Season 2 is right around the corner and on time. Even after several scares from the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, the Game of Thrones prequel’s production went down quite smoothly. However, the strikes did affect some aspects of the shoot, as writer Sara Hess recalled what went down during those tumultuous days.

Filming during the Hollywood strikes was “rough”

As the cast and crew of House of the Dragon prepares for the premiere of Season 2, several promotional tours are revealing behind-the-scene secrets. During an interview with EW, writer Sara Hess recalled filming during the infamous strikes, “It was rough. It felt real s–tty, I’m not going to lie.”

“We talked to the WGA and, ultimately, they understood that if we left the set, they were going to make it without us. I don’t think the WGA loved it, but they were okay with us being there in a producing capacity.”

Ryan Condal says writing “had” to be done very early

Showrunner Ryan Condal joined in and explained why writing is so crucial to the series, and why it had to begin early. He said, “We were prepared for it. The writing really was done. The writing is always done on the show because it has to be. You cannot prep a show that is this complex [otherwise]. We’re shooting two feature-size film units every day. That’s the way that we keep on schedule to release the show every two years, otherwise it would take a year just to film the show.”

“That’s why we spend a year writing in advance,” he added. “We had to accelerate the polish schedule, where you take aboard all the actor feedback as they come on, production feedback as directors come on. Usually we go through a very methodical process of taking those things one layer at a time, but knowing that [the strike] was coming, we compressed probably two months of polishing into a month. That was probably the most stress it caused at the outset.”

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