House of the Dragon’s Tom Bennett Predicts an Ulf Corruption Arc
“He’s been trodden on and spat on his whole life, and now he is in control of a nuclear warhead.”
Spoilers for House of the Dragon season two, episode seven: “The Red Sowing.”
Introducing a new character to the Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon universe is never a simple task. There are already too many characters in these shows, and now there’s someone new you want us to keep track of? In the season-two premiere, House of the Dragon ushered in a group of seemingly random smallfolk whose purpose finally became clear in the penultimate episode: Addam of Hull (Clinton Liberty), Hugh Hammer (Kieran Bew), and Ulf (Tom Bennett) all have Targaryen blood running through their veins and have now been recruited as dragonriders for Rhaenyra’s “army of bastards.”
For Hugh and Ulf, that meant partaking in the Red Sowing, a Hunger Games–style reaping for anyone attempting to assert royal blood and mount a dragon. “It’s just fucking chaos and carnage, and every last motherfucker dies apart from the two of us,” Bennett says of Ulf’s and Hugh’s unexpected rise to power. But based on Ulf’s introduction as a good-natured drunk who claims Targaryen heritage to score free drinks in King’s Landing, you’d be forgiven for assuming the character was meant to serve as mere comic relief. “I was quite pleased, in many ways, that he feels like this subsidiary background character,” says Bennett. “He’s a bit of world-building from the perspective of a Flea Bottom resident. Ulf is used as a tool to show what it’s like, boots on the floor — to be hungry, to be starving, to be shat on from a great height by those in power.”
Bennett’s biggest moment prior to this week was back in episode three when Ulf introduced the idea of “dragonseeds”: Targaryen bastards scattered across the kingdom owing to the noble family’s profligate ways. Claiming to be the son of Baelon the Brave, Ulf lays out an alleged family tree that demonstrates he is Rhaenyra’s uncle. But this scene, Bennett says, offered a bit of a challenge for his first day on set.
“Everyone’s name is the same. The pronunciation differences are so tiny — infinitesimally small,” he laments. “I had a three-page monologue, and it’s all names: Jaehaerys, Viserys, Rhaenyra, Valyrian, Velaryon. I’d get to the end of that monologue, and the speech coach would come over and say, ‘You’re saying Valyrian, and actually the house is Velaryon and they speak High Valyrian.’ I’m like, ‘Oh my god, let’s do it again then.’”
House of the Dragon seems to want audiences to understand dragons as the equivalent of nuclear weapons, with all the gravity that entails. Yet here’s Ulf getting goaded on by his drinking buddies to give dragon-taming a go. There’s a level of comedy to Ulf that’s not seen much in the rest of the show.
I’d be surprised if I wasn’t the first character to ever smile in House of the Dragon, let alone have a laugh and be a lovable rogue and a jolly chap. It’s lovely to give voice to commoners, to smallfolk, and to get to use my own South London accent and be a character who does laugh. And Ulf is self-serving, like lots of the highborn are, but in a way we haven’t seen yet.
Everyone’s having a good time at the bar putting Ulf up to dragonrider tryouts. Then the next scene has a very different tone: Another dragonseed, Hugh, has recently lost his child and is basically breaking up with his wife to make this heavy decision. Are Ulf and Hugh meant to be two different sides of the Targaryen-bastard coin?
We’re both lower-born. We’re both from Flea Bottom. We both come from nothing and don’t have much. One of the big differences is that Ulf doesn’t take things quite as seriously as Hugh has to as a father and a husband. I love getting to do scenes with Kieran. I love getting to have fun in a way that other actors on House of the Dragon don’t. Oh, you bastard. Why are you allowed to do that and I’m not? Well, I’m Ulf, and you’re not.
Without spoiling anything that may or may not come, Ulf is not described very charitably in the faux histories that serve as the basis for House of the Dragon. But he seems like a slightly more hapless, lovable sort of a fellow on the show thus far. Is that part of the way House of the Dragon seems to be adding more depth and sympathy to most of the characters?
I’ve read the book — and it is a big book. It isn’t a traditional fictional book. It’s a retelling of a fictional history with anecdotes, and nobody quite knows the full truth. Ulf isn’t fleshed out in the book. Part of the fun for showrunner Ryan Condal and executive producer Sara Hess and I and whichever director I’m working with is that we get to put meat on Ulf’s bones.
He doesn’t come across well in the books. He’s a drunk who does things we may find out about, which I can’t say. I think they chose me for a reason, in that maybe they wanted a character who is slightly more relatable and kind of a lovable rogue. A bit of a prick, but a lovable prick. I do lovable prick very well.
Speaking of being chosen, why did Silverwing accept Ulf as a rider? Maybe there’s not a real answer to this, because the magic of dragons is unknowable, but were you bringing some sort of hidden worthiness to the scene as an actor?
You’ve hit the nail on the head. We don’t know, and George R.R. Martin’s been quite loose about how dragons choose riders. Certainly, riders don’t choose dragons. And there was always a question of Why did Silverwing not just burn me to a crisp when I’d put my foot in one of her eggs?
We thought about lots of reasons it could be. Ultimately, I must have Targaryen blood, because that’s the one consistent: You have to have Targaryen blood. If nothing else, it concretes the fact that part of my story is true. I think the fact that my scent is masked by a pungent aroma of dragon piss and shit that I roll around in before I meet her helps. It helps that she’s known to be one of the kinder, gentler dragons. That plays to my favor, that she’s not Vermithor. Vermithor wanted me dead. Vermithor wanted everyone dead. There’s a lot of luck involved in what Ulf does.
Does Ulf feel like he always was destined and deserving of something like this? Is this Ulf getting a chance to be who he always thought he was, or are we seeing the unlocking of some new ambition in this scene?
I don’t think Ulf ever suspected this was what would become of him. Ulf used his stories to get what he wanted, which by and large was conning merchants into buying him a pint of mead. Ulf looks out for himself. The fact that he’s been trodden on and spat on his whole life and now he is in control of a nuclear warhead. We will see what that power does to him. You know, power corrupts completely, and I think power will corrupt Ulf.
What is Ulf doing at the end of the episode? I presume Rhaenyra sent him to King’s Landing to do a flyby. Why Ulf, and what is he thinking while he’s barely managing to ride Silverwing?
I think I’m the only dragonrider you will ever see laugh on a dragon. You see people do Blue Steel, sexy dragon-riding acting, and I can’t do that. If Ryan and Sara asked me to do that, we’d all be fucked. But Ulf is this instinctive being who now has a Ferrari and is taking it for a joyride. He’s hot-wired this thing, he’s a live-for-now creature, and he’s sitting on unlimited power. He’s going to see what it does. There’s a degree of bravado.
Rhaenyra knows what she’s doing. Maybe she spotted me and said, “Yeah, he’s the right one. Send him to do the drive-by.”
Do we think anybody told Ulf about the dragon-killing scorpions that were no doubt aimed at Silverwing while he was lingering in the sky above King’s Landing?
No one mentioned it. Then I got back to Dragonstone and was like, “Did you know they’ve got great big fucking crossbows? Because they were shooting at me!” And then Hugh goes, “Oh yeah, I built those.” “Well, you should have mentioned that then, shouldn’t you, you prick?! They were shooting them at me and then the one with one eye and the massive dragon started chasing me!”
None of that happens in the show. [Laughs.] I’m making all of that up.