Game of Thrones’ Newest Villain Speaks Out on Playing Crabfeeder in House of the Dragon

Game of Thrones had no shortage of unique and interesting villains throughout its eight seasons, and House of the Dragon wasted no time joining the party. The second episode of HBO’s record-breaking prequel introduced viewers to a terrifying villain named Craghas Drahar, better known as the Crabfeeder. While the Crabfeeder’s arc on House of the Dragon only lasted a couple of episodes, he certainly made an impact with fans.

Following House of the Dragon‘s third episode, Daniel Scott-Smith sat down with EW to talk about bringing the Crabfeeder to life. Craghas Drahar doesn’t get a lot of backstory or description in George R.R. Martin’s Fire and Blood, aside from the fact that he literally feeds enemies to crabs, so Scott-Smith and the show’s creative team had a lot of wiggle room when bringing him to life.

“He’s a nasty character. So as an actor, it’s a dream,” Scott-Smith said. “It’s nice when you have details, as well, but it’s also nice when it’s a completely open book. That gave us the freedom to do what we wanted with the character, which, on a creative level, was incredible for me and I think for the directors, as well, because we could play with it and build our own version of Crabfeeder.”

In addition to figuring out how they wanted the Crabfeeder to look and act on-screen, Scott-Smith and the team got the chance to think about the history of the character before he showed up in the Stepstones.

“Craghas Drahar is seen as the bad guy, but for any bad character there’s always got to be a journey of how they got to that point,” the actor explained. 

“We wanted to remember that there’s two sides to him. So we spoke about the idea of him being a prince, or that he calls himself a prince, so he came from some sort of higher House,” he continued. “We spoke about that and the gradual decline to where he is, how the greyscale might affect him physically, even mentally.”

What did you think of the Crabfeeder on House of the Dragon? Let us know in the comments!