‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Boss Explains How New ‘GOT’ Spinoff Is Like a Western

Note: This story contains spoilers from “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” Episode 1.

Much has been made of the new “Game of Thrones” prequel “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” having a more comedic tone but there’s another genre at the core of HBO’s new Westeros-set series — the Western.

Co-creator and showrunner Ira Parker explained that the new season was always meant to be lighter, because the George R.R. Martin novellas they’re based on are written that way. But he also recognized the way Dunk (Peter Claffey) rolls into the Ashford Meadows tourney — man on a horse, new small town, trouble afoot — lent itself to some Western inspirations.

That, coupled with Dunk’s fish-out-of-water mentality being alone after years of traveling with Ser Arlan of Pennytree, meant the show could juggle the comedy and the drama equally. It was that mix that Parker also hoped would keep the series fresh as they stayed strictly in the Hedge Knight’s POV throughout the season rather than hopping around.

Below, Parker tells TheWrap about finding the balance for the show’s tone, expanding on other characters — he knows Daniel Ings’ The Laughing Storm is destined to be a fan favorite — and more. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

A lot has been made of the series being more comedic than “Game of Thrones” or “House of the Dragon.” What balance did you want to strike between the comedy and the drama?

Parker: It was very important for us that it is a reflection of the novellas, that lighter tone. Dunk is just an absurd human being in this world, and him not knowing anything, and just trying to figure out if these lords and ladies are actually real human beings or just f–king mad is a huge part of the comedy. Him trying to just figure out how to do life by himself again in this new world is a huge part of the comedy.

That came very much from a place of character, whether it’s fish out of water or somebody endeavoring to do something hard. There’s a Western aspect to this. You know, a guy with a couple horses sets out to a new frontier, lands in a small town, and there’s a girl and a bad guy, and then they choose pistols at dawn.

While the series feels very one-to-one from the novellas, there is still plenty of room to expand on characters not named Dunk or Egg. Who were you most excited to flesh out a bit more?

Part of the fun of this job is I just got to go in and pick out my favorite characters from the book and just tell more stories with them and The Laughing Storm – easy pick. I don’t know what we would have done without Danny Ings because he’s just phenomenal. He’s perfect. If only he was, eight inches taller. We could have done a whole spinoff.

I just love this world so much because anything could happen, seeing it from a different POV, finding the language of a different POV. You’re not in the polished hallways above the Red Keep, and it’s how do people talk? How do people communicate with each other? It’s just a little grittier. It’s a little lower, which is obviously just the most fun stuff to write. It’s very characterful, and so we knew we wanted to explore that as much as possible.

What were you excited about when it came to the period of Westeros this show is set in? The dragons are gone, we’re a little over a decade removed from The Blackfyre Rebellions, Spring is in the air.

I’m actually not sure I even gave a lot of consideration to the time period when approaching this, it was more just about Dunk and seeing it from his vantage. The truth is, I would have loved to do a story about small folk in the age of Dany coming back with her dragons. There’s something about the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern aspect of this that is just infinitely entertaining.

Dunk gives us a wonderful window. He’s very relatable. He’s very likable into this world, and he’s our only POV. It feels different just naturally, that we’re not roaming around, and picking up different stories every single week, that we just stay – we’re cutting from scenes of Dunk to Dunk. We didn’t have to strain very hard to be different than ‘Game of Thrones,’ to be different than ‘House of the Dragon.’ It just naturally came from the text that George gave us. So that was very nice for us.

“A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” airs Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.

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