Fabien Frankel is prone to uncontrollable fits of laughter. It would happen at school (“I was really naughty”), during his time at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (“We had to act like butter in a pan…”), and on the set of his new show, HBO’s long-awaited Game of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon. “Rhys Ifans is the most electric person to have around,” he says of one of his co-stars. “In scenes where you’re faced with a dragon, he makes you giggle. I’m like, ‘Please don’t look at me.’”
Set 200 years before Daenerys Targaryen torched King’s Landing, the 10-part series charts the history of her family, from their conquest of the Seven Kingdoms to a bitter civil war in which dragons fought dragons. Frankel plays Criston Cole, a dashing knight who rises to become a kingmaker. “He’s not what you think he’s going to be,” the 28-year-old says. “Over the course of the series, he changes a great deal.”
Having made his cinematic debut (coincidentally opposite Emilia Clarke, the Mother of Dragons herself) in 2019’s Last Christmas, Frankel has also starred in Charing Cross Theatre’s The Knowledge and the BBC’s The Serpent, in which he played a French backpacker held captive.
Frankel is half-French, raised in London by a mother who preferred to use the language at home. “I’m amazed I speak English, to be honest,” he says, chuckling. His father, meanwhile, was an actor who died when Frankel was a baby. “I’m getting to the age that he was when he came out of drama school,” he says. “As I’ve started working, people from his life have magically appeared and found me. I’ve gotten to know him through them and that’s been lovely.”
House of the Dragon will air on HBO Max from August 21.
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