House of the Dragon star Toussaint believes if dragons can fly, Lord Velaryon can be Black
Though House of the Dragon might be breaking records, some of its detractors sound like broken records — at least when it comes to the show’s diversity.
The members of House Velaryon, pale-skinned and purple-eyed in George R.R. Martin’s hallowed texts, are wealthy Black seafarers in the HBO series — their race has been the subject of a number of think pieces, rants, and general internet weighings-in.
But all that hubbub doesn’t faze actor Steve Toussaint, who plays the patriarch Lord Corlys Velaryon.
“They are happy with a dragon flying,” Toussaint said in a recent Men’s Health interview. “They’re happy with white hair and violet-colored eyes, but a rich Black guy? That’s beyond the pale.”
“What has been wonderful is for every toxic person that has somehow found their way into my timeline, there have been so many others who have been so supportive and been like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t wait, this is going to be great!'” Toussaint said. “Even when we were doing certain scenes, there would be supporting artists who would come up and go, ‘It’s great to have this representation.'”
The decision to depict the richest family in Westeros as Black came from showrunners Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik, who acknowledged the frequent criticism Game of Thrones received for its lack of diversity.
“The world is very different now than it was 10 years ago when [Game of Thrones] all started. It’s different than 20 years ago when Peter Jackson made The Lord of the Rings. These types of stories need to be more inclusive than they traditionally have been,” Condal told EW recently. “It was very important for Miguel and me to create a show that was not another bunch of white people on the screen, just to put it very bluntly.”
During its eight-season run, Game of Thrones featured any number of fantastical creatures but very few actors of color in substantial roles. And that made the storylines of those who were featured — such as Nathalie Emmanuel’s Missandei and Jacob Anderson’s Grey Worm — that much more glaring when they went awry.
“It’s safe to say that Game of Thrones has been under criticism for their lack of representation and the truth of it is that Missandei and Grey Worm have represented so many people because there’s only two of them,” Emmanuel told EW in 2019.
She added, “So this is a conversation going forward about when you’re casting shows like this, that you are inclusive in your casting. I knew what it meant that she was there, I know what it means that I am existing in the spaces that I am because when I was growing up, I didn’t see people like me. But it wasn’t until she was gone that I really felt what it really, truly meant, until I saw the outcry and outpouring of love and outrage and upset about it, I really understood what it meant.”
House of the Dragon, then, is in one way a correction of GoT‘s past shortcomings. And in another way, Toussaint’s Lord Velaryon is a fulfillment of Martin’s original vision.
“Long, long ago when he was conceiving of this world, [Martin] himself had considered the idea of making Velaryons a race of Black people with silver hair that essentially came from the other side of the ocean and conquered Westeros,” Condal said. “That’s a fascinating idea and that always really stuck with me because it’s such a stark image. I just thought, ‘Well, why couldn’t we do a version of that now?'”