Harry Lloyd hopped over to the Montreal Comiccon, and as you can imagine, a lot of the conversation revolved around his involvement with the acclaimed show Arcane.
But to start off, did you know he’s the great-great-great-grandson of Charles Dickens? Neat bit of trivia.
Harry Lloyd observed in his opening of the panel that in his career, he’s seemingly unknowingly slipped into large fandoms without even realizing what he was about to get himself into. He had no idea Game of Thrones would become the juggernaut it became, or that Arcane would become as popular as it was. Heck, he didn’t even know about Doctor Who when he joined Doctor Who back in 2007, when David Tennant was the Doctor. He, of course, knew about the X-Men, but still couldn’t wrap his head around being one of the few actors to bring Charles Xavier to life during the third season of Legion.
But once the rumination began, we started talking a lot about Arcane. Note: if you still haven’t seen Arcane, please, do yourself the favour. As Arcane is based on the hit game League of Legends, there wasn’t a lot of story present in the game, but a ton of lore that was kind of compiled by the fandom over the years. He had no idea about LoL, so he felt quite free going into the audition knowing that not only did he know nothing about the game, but that the franchise wasn’t bogged down by canonical lore that the writers and actors had to adhere to.
When it came time to audition for the role of Viktor, Lloyd tapped into his work on the film Anthropoid back in 2016, where he played a WWII Czech resistance fighter. Lloyd’s brother was a fan of LoL and encouraged him to go to the audition; he tapped into that accent that he did. But they recorded his audition in a car in Orange County, and Lloyd couldn’t quite remember how he did the accent, so he intentionally ended up doing a bad Czech accent for the audition. But since Viktor and the world in Arcane is fantastical, the made-up botched accent actually worked perfectly for the role of Viktor. Despite Piltover, the fictional upper city within the universe of Arcane being fictional, Lloyd tapped into real-world history and politics when fleshing out the idea of Viktor. Using the Eastern European accent as a baseline, he would imagine Vik as being a child born within the Soviet Union and likely caught polio when he was young, which led to his disability.
The biggest challenge when it came to recording Viktor was the extended periods in between sessions, chiefly between the two seasons, as he was terrified he would lose the very particular accent he cultivated for Vik. But to help with the recording sessions, he would often have his cat with him, which would provide warmth and comfort to the sessions, putting a smile on his face that made recording more relaxing. He also confirmed that the “knowledge is a paradox” line is his absolute favourite line in the whole series, regardless of him being the one to say it. He also did know the end of the show in advance, but didn’t have any of the visual cues for how Viktor would look or sound as the season would progress, meaning he couldn’t fully wrap his head around it. And while he can’t per se pick a favourite character from the show, his wife has gifted him with Heimerdinger socks, so maybe there is an obvious pick!
Of course, it wasn’t all just Arcane, as Lloyd is perhaps also best known for playing Viserys in Game of Thrones‘ first season. He stated, maybe as a joke, maybe not, that since he was only in the first season, he was there when everyone was in good spirits and friendly towards everyone, but he isn’t so sure that was the case by the end of the show. Much like Viktor, he did know the end of his arc before seeing the scripts and was able to prepare for that in advance. And while most of his scenes in season one were shot in Malta, he did film his death scene in the studio lot in Belfast. That day, it was raining so hard that you could hear the rain hitting the roof, rendering all the dialogue unusable for the scene, forcing almost the whole sequence to be redubbed with ADR in post-production.
He also emphasized that trying to act drunk, as an actor, can result in some terrible acting. So in between takes for his death sequence, he would go to the rest area, get his tea and blanket, and slip in a bit of whiskey he snagged into the tea. He didn’t get drunk, but the taste and the smell allowed him to tap into that mindset to put on a more convincing performance. He also stated that the scar on Viserys’ chest was something he pitched to HBO, who are very receptive to input from their actors, at least on Thrones. He liked the idea that Viserys had a rough time of it in exile and has the scars to prove it. Jason Momoa, who played Khal Drogo, also pitched to HBO that Drogo should walk into the blade during the duel that would ultimately claim his life. The rationale was that Drogo wouldn’t get hurt in a duel, being the fiercest warrior, so he would walk into the blade to prove his ferocity to his opponent, which in turn led to the open wound. He also pitched that Drogo should rip out his opponent’s tongue, which they approved of and commissioned a prop tongue for the scene. He also emphasized that Jason Momoa’s hugs hurt a lot, and that the man is Tigger from Pooh Bear, but in the body of the Hulk.
Lloyd may have only worked on the first season of Thrones, but that wasn’t his only tenure in Westeros, having done the audiobook for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms after meeting George R.R. Martin in Santa Fe. He liked the challenge that an audiobook provided, which saw him do the individual voices for over 100 characters in the book, which, as he stated, made his life so much harder for no reason. He quite liked doing audiobooks and would love to do more. And yes, he has done an audiobook for a Charles Dickens novel, Great Expectations, to be exact, and would be interested in playing his relative one day in a film, but thinks live-action does Dickens’ works a disservice. He initially had no interest in Dickens’ works as a youth, but by 16, he got into it and even did his thesis on Dickens. But he also knows that a fun bit of trivia is just that, and there’s no legacy burden for him to bear, something he thinks is ridiculous.
And that concludes the Q&A with Harry Lloyd! We thank him for his time and for coming over to visit!
