Forget Ulf the White — House of the Dragon ’s season-two finale introduced a character who might be having the most fun in all of the known world. Sharako Lohar isn’t quite what book readers might remember from George R.R.
Martin’s Fire & Blood ; the Triarchy admiral is now a woman, with all the flamboyance and many wives of a different Martin character, pirate “queen” Racallio Ryndoon. Those changes render Abigail Thorn’s flirty, mud-wrestling commander a delight onscreen, a wild card who puts Tyland Lannister (Jefferson Hall) through the wringer in order to win her naval support against the House Velaryon–led blockade of King’s Landing. “Tyland’s a bit of a meek and mousy character, and in this episode he finds his quality.
Sharako is there to assist him in this journey,” Thorn says of the unexpected friendship that builds between the Master of Coin and the Triarchy’s most feared warrior after the former wins their mud-wrestling bout. “The backhand across the face that ends the fight was my suggestion, actually, and I was really happy they worked with me for that. Tyland’s arc in this episode is about him finding his fire.
” “The Queen Who Ever Was” ends with Sharako and Tyland (whom she finally calls by his correct first name after misidentifying him the entire episode) sailing to Westeros for the Battle of the Gullet, a major moment in Fire & Blood that House of the Dragon creator and showrunner Ryan Condal confirmed will take place in season three. That means more Sharako and more Thorn, who, in addition to appearing in HotD and The Acolyte , has more than 1.6 million followers on her Philosophy Tube YouTube channel and is a trans-rights advocate .
Of all the characters on HotD , Sharako might be the most willing to break the status quo: Her Triarchy comrades call her “him” because of her battle prowess, and she asks Tyland to impregnate her wives after he wins her approval. “Sharako herself doesn’t express an opinion on this in the show,” Thorn says of the honorific, “but she doesn’t strike me as a sort of person who really gives a damn what other people think.” You released a video a few months ago in which you announced your role on House of the Dragon and mentioned working with the series’ creative team on building the character.
What was that process like? The first thing we worked on together was the costume. They showed me some mock-ups. I said, “My impression of her is that she’s quite like Blackbeard.
” Blackbeard had loads of guns on him, and he had fuses under his hat. I said, “I think she’s somebody who’s quite theatrical, so she doesn’t necessarily have to fight. She can fight like a devil, but she projects this image, and that’s part of how she manages her crew and her wars.
” They said, “Well, we can’t give you guns, but we can give you knives.” They just started putting knives on me, and I was like, “Just keep going, just keep adding them in.” She’s got the big one up front; there’s two on the back, one in the arm, one in the boot.
I had seven or eight big steel knives and a big steel sword on me. I build the character from the physicality first. I do a lot of Michael Chekhov technique and a lot of animal studies We did a lot of rehearsals with director Geeta Patel and executive producer Sara Hess.
We talked about Sharako’s childhood, what she might have seen in the War for the Stepstones, what she might think about Corlys and Daemon . Daniele Lydon, the dialect coach, and I also talked a lot about Sharako’s accent. We cycled through a few different options before we settled on her accent, which is a little bit more cut glass than mine.
I’m from the north, but Sharako is somebody who has [ slips into Sharako’s accent ] learned the language of court extremely precisely. Are you able to share any of those backstory details? How did you decide how she carries herself? My lips are sealed in terms of the backstory. In terms of physicality, I always find that a character’s shoes tell me an awful lot, and the way the character connects with the earth is very important.
I knew she’d have these big, heavy boots. An exercise I like to do is incorporate something into my own wardrobe that the character might wear. I got really big, heavy, knee-length boots and went stomping around London in them, and turned up to rehearsals in them, to get the energy of somebody who’s very weighed down.
All that steel weighs her down, too, so I put some weights in a backpack and created this very stocky, tanklike person from the soles of the feet up. What was filming the mud wrestling like? How did you and Jefferson work together? We were up to our knees in mud on the day. I was up at something like 4 a.
m. to get into the wig and makeup. Before we even got out to the location, there were quite a few rehearsals with the stunt team refining the fight.
The backhand across the face that ends the fight was my suggestion, actually, and I was really happy they worked with me for that. Tyland’s arc in this episode is about him finding his fire. Tyland’s a bit of a meek and mousy character, and in this episode he finds his quality, and Sharako is there to assist him in this journey.
That’s her role, to bring this out of him. I suggested, “What if we had this moment where he goes further than he thinks he’s gonna, where he does something he thinks is shocking?” He’s quite a chivalrous and uptight character, and he’s treating Sharako with a certain degree of deference because she’s a woman. What if he really does something vicious? The noise that Sharako makes, this very womanly scream, is something we worked on, too.
We developed it all and we practiced it all on the crash mats, me and Jefferson and the stunt team. Tilly Powell was my wonderful fight double for some of it. The moment where Jefferson’s fist makes contact, that was Tilly.
Then we got out there, and they had a goat on set that is a very famous goat; he was in a McVities biscuits advert . Toward the end, we were like, “Let’s go, let’s get another take, another take, another take!” It was a blast. This show is so dark thematically, but Sharako is very funny, from her overly macho posturing to that self-aware cannibalism joke with Tyland.
How did you approach the character’s humor? When I got the character breakdown, the only thing they told me was, “She’s completely bonkers.” In the first few auditions, they encouraged me to improvise with Jefferson. During the rehearsal, it was about finding: Where does she hurt? What’s she proud of? Where did she come from? What is she afraid of? What does she really want here? We get that glimpse of something darker in her when she says, “The Sea Snake will rue the day we meet again,” and it’s like, Ooh, what happened the day they met the first time? I have my own thoughts on that, and maybe we’ll find out.
Figuring out her arc in the episode was important to me, because it would have been easy to come in and play her in the first scene the way she is in the final one. I deliberately wanted her starting out very cold and thinking about what it means to have a man from Westeros walk in here , when we fought the War for the Stepstones against them, and what she would want to do to him if her commanding officers weren’t there. Her arc throughout the episode is realizing that Tyland isn’t what she expected, and then realizing, especially during the banquet scene, “Damn, I kind of like this guy.
[ Laughs ] Maybe I’m not gonna go to bed. Maybe we should stay up, actually.” Sharako is a woman, but is referred to as “he” and “him” in the series by the Triarchy, because they refer to their admirals and warriors that way.
I’m wondering if you can give me, drawing on your philosophy education and work on Philosophy Tube, a philosophical explanation for that difference in pronouns. I can draw on the show itself, actually, because women coming into our power is one of the themes of season two . We see that Rhaenyra’s arc throughout this season is figuring out, God, I’ve gotta pick up a sword and get in there , and Sharako is somebody who learned that lesson quite a few years ago.
There’s an interesting parallel to Rhaenyra in that she’s a woman who is absolutely not afraid to jump in and do the things ladies in her society aren’t supposed to do. Because of that, and also because she’s a woman who is quite sexually forward with both men and women, I guess the heads of the Triarchy figure, This must be some kind of guy, or at the very least, if we call her a “lady” and say that she can’t keep up with a man, she seems to get really upset. Sharako herself doesn’t express an opinion on this in the show, but she doesn’t strike me as a sort of person who really gives a damn what other people think.
Another philosophy-related question for you: Was the “a poet ...
a philosopher” line yours, given your background? The line was total coincidence and couldn’t be changed because of the writers’ strike. That was very funny, that it came to me. We don’t learn how many wives Sharako has when she asks Tyland to impregnate them.
Do you have an internal idea of how many there are, the range? Yeah, because they cut the scene off at Jefferson’s face! They don’t cut back to my face. What you don’t see is the take we did where it cuts back to me, and she goes [ smirks and shrugs ]. As for the range of wives, there’s wives and there’s wives , aren’t there? “Wives” doesn’t necessarily imply a ring.
I do think perhaps there’s one or a handful who would be closer than others. So there’s an amorphous number of wives. You know, maybe Tyland is her wife by the time we see them together on the ship.
You never know. “Wife” could mean a lot of things. Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you — and thank you so much for your interview with Manny about The Acolyte . I really enjoyed reading it. Oh, thank you! I keep being like, “Where is the season-two renewal? Is it happening? Where is it?” [ Pantomimes zipping her lips closed ] My lips are sealed.
I can’t say..
