This article is sort of about House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms but it’s really about Dan Fogler and maybe also a lot about The Offer.
Let’s back it up.
After a mostly dreary and sloggy second season, Game of Throne’s prequel series House of the Dragon is beginning to round into peak GoT-ish form several episodes into its third season. One reason for that is the addition of Dan Fogler to the cast as Ser Torrhen Manderly, a knight who quickly parleys his clever wit and devilish grin into a seat on Queen Rhaenyra’s Small Council as Master of Coin.
While we haven’t seen an extensive amount of Manderly as yet, he brings the kind of specific and quirky energy to HotD that was the hallmark of Game of Thrones (think Tyrion, Cersei, Jaime, et al, and that’s just House Lannister).
More recently, Daniel Ings brought this kind of energy and more as Ser Lyonel Baratheon on A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which crushed overall as the “other” GoT prequel and sets quite a standard for HotD to aspire to. Ings in fact stole every scene he was in, playing a hilariously brash, often drunken, but ultimately good-natured Baratheon lord who becomes a friend and ally to Dunk (Peter Claffey).
Now, back to Dan Fogler, who quickly ascended into rare Someone Who I Will Watch In Anything heights after I caught him brilliantly playing Francis Ford Coppola in The Offer, a compulsively watchable limited series about the making of The Godfather.
In a cast lousy with all-star talent – The Offer is worth watching for Matthew Goode’s Robert Evans alone, and that’s not even getting to Miles Teller, ostensibly the show’s star in the form of producer Al Ruddy – Fogler stood out, breathing energy, charisma, and passion into the man who directed several of the greatest movies ever made.
I was particularly enthralled by sequences that involved Coppola collaborating and occasionally bickering with The Godfather author Mario Puzo (Patrick Gallo, fabulous himself).
There’s a tremendous scene where Coppola and Puzo are holed up in a house in Los Angeles, struggling through the details of The Godfather script, and meanwhile they’re both working on making lunch in the kitchen. Suddenly Coppola takes a step back and realizes, wait, this is the movie: the banter, the Italian traditions, relationships, family. That’s the core of the movie.
And it’s just magic.
This of course connects for me to scenes in Goodfellas, as so many things do: the massive platters of food at Paulie’s house, a late-night meal over at Tommy’s mom’s house (replete with a painting featuring two dogs and a nonplussed gentleman), and of course a dinner banquet in prison that features sauce that may or may not contain too many onions.
As I mentioned, Daniel Ings is not to be missed in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and he’s an accomplished and dynamic actor besides. His range spans from a dramatic role in The Crown as Commander Michael Parker to the absolute major part he plays in the delightful British romcom, Lovesick. His character, Luke Curran, is one of the most consistently funny you will ever witness.
The fact alone that the Game of Thrones universe has attracted the talents of Dan Fogler and Ings is noteworthy in itself. Let’s hope that Fogler’s Ser Manderly continues to expand his role on House of the Dragon, perhaps by becoming a close ally of Rhaenyra’s as she plots to hold onto the Iron Throne and Westeros.