Daniel Ings on Bringing 'The Laughing Storm' to Life in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

George R.R. Martin‘s The Hedge Knight, the source-material novella for HBO’s A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, doesn’t give many details about Ser Lyonel Baratheon. But there’s just enough to have earned the character a fan following, both from his actions supporting would-be hero Dunk at a crucial part in the story and his evocative nickname, “The Laughing Storm.” In the TV show, Ser Lyonel becomes a wonderfully vivid character, brought to life by actor Daniel Ings’ charismatic performance. He’s a little bit scary at first, holding court in his antler-bedecked helmet—”Baratheon” is a name Game of Thrones fans will recognize, thanks to King Robert’s family—but that doesn’t last long. Soon, we realize Ser Lyonel has a good heart, tucked deep beneath that bold, brash, boozy exterior. At a recent press day for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, io9 asked Ings what sets Ser Lyonel apart from the other highborn lords we’ve met in Westeros. “I feel like he’s a sort of crusading adventurer, really. I always thought of him as a bit of a pirate, and a lot of the characters in the world of Game of Thrones are essentially wrapped up in what it means to be part of their family and what the family name means to them,” Ings said. “I think for Lyonel, what it means is, like, going off on these adventures and fighting battles and testing oneself against a worthy foe. I sort of see him as fairly battle-hardened at this point in time, and I always kind of thought of him as being essentially addicted—he’s really only alive when he’s at war. And so in a way, for Lyonel, it was about finding something that’s worth fighting for.” The Lord of Storm’s End finds that cause in Dunk, as A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms‘ later episodes will show us. But in the season premiere, we get a crash course in Ser Lyonel’s debaucherous ways. The sequence where he first meets Dunk at his pavilion party—testing wits, then having a dance-off, then a drunken exchange of deep thoughts—is not in Martin’s original story, which has just a few mentions of the Laughing Storm in action. At the press roundtable, Ings responded to a question about how he crafted his take on the character—and what it was like portraying a Westeros eccentric that so many readers already love, even if they don’t yet know too much about him. “I was given a lot of freedom by Ira [Parker], our showrunner, and Owen [Harris], our director,” Ings said. “But honestly, Ira had done a huge amount to bring that character that people love from the books and to kind of give life to him and flesh him out and give a sense of the fun and irreverence of that guy on the page.” Ings continued. “Reading it initially, I was, like, ‘Well, I want to play a guy called the Laughing Storm.’ He was described in the brief as Captain Jack Sparrow meets Ernest Hemingway, which was such a fascinating collision. I was like, ‘I don’t know how those two flavors fit together, but boy do I want to taste the outcome.’ So there was a lot of freedom, and Ira was super open to that kind of playfulness, and it needed that. He created an environment where I could be confident and be weird, and I just had to sort of trust those guys that they would pull me back in if it went too far.” New episodes of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms arrive Sundays on HBO and HBO Max. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.