House of the Dragon’s Criston Cole may be a horrible person, but he has one big redeeming feature: He’s played by Fabien Frankel, who is absolutely lovely and very humble. So humble in fact that he genuinely worried he’d get fired after an onscreen mishap.
Frankel told the story to a rapt audience at Comic-Con in 2022, just before House of the Dragon debuted. Matt Smith, who plays Daemon Targaryen, was there as well—and he was a big draw, because he captured everyone’s hearts as the Eleventh Doctor when he appeared in Doctor Who. So some people probably held their breath when they heard he’d been whacked in the face with a prop weapon … and poor Frankel was the one holding it. If you’ve ever messed up at work, you’ll feel for him at that moment.
“Our first rehearsal with Matt, I smashed him in the face with a sword,” Frankel said, “and I thought I was going to get fired pretty quickly.”
Smith joked, “Scarred me for life,” but in reality he was totally fine. They don’t use real weapons in rehearsals!
Later on at the event, Frankel elaborated on the incident, saying, “God, of all the people that I could have possibly axed in the face, Matt was the worst one.” He went on, ‘I was ready for them to [say], ‘Matt Smith, is it? You’re out the show.'” Luckily, that didn’t happen!
Remember, this was before House of the Dragon kicked off, and it got people fascinated about the young man playing Criston. Variety even asked Frankel about the incident in an interview, and he remembered that there were no hard feelings—the two actors went out for drinks afterwards.
And it wasn’t even entirely Frankel’s fault, because the sword rebounded off Smith’s prop shield! “I think we should set the story straight for the fans out there that, actually, this is Matt Smith’s fault. I take no responsibility,” Frankel joked.
As you can see, Frankel’s a great guy. So hey, House of the Dragon fandom… maybe stop conflating him with his character and harassing him on social media? Thanks.
Published: Sep 20, 2024 05:13 pm