Men's Health August 10, 2026 0 Comments

Unlocking the Dark Side: The Unexpected Secrets Behind James Norton’s Mastery of Villainy

Ever wondered what it takes to turn a background character into a magnetic villain you love to hate? Well, James Norton’s Ormund Hightower in the latest season of House of the Dragon did exactly that—bringing theatrical flair and a twisted paternal charm that kept us glued to the screen. But let’s be honest, how many characters can boast a death scene involving a dagger where it definitely “goes places” —and still leave you oddly impressed? Dive into the gritty tales from the First Battle of Tumbleton, behind-the-scenes spit on filming one of the most unforgettable exits Westeros has seen, and get under the skin of a character who was as complex as he was cunning. Ready to see what made Ormund one hell of a villain? LEARN MORE

9 min read

The following story contains spoilers for the season 3 finale of House of the Dragon.

HOUSE OF THE Dragon is going to miss James Norton. The 41-year-old actor’s portrayal of Ormund Hightower elevated a minor figure from George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood into the closest thing the show’s third season had to an outright central villain. Norton played Ormund with a theatrical—at times almost preening—bravado that made him fun to watch and even more fun to root against. But he also infused the character with a hint of humanity in the form of a paternal love for his ward, Daeron Targaryen (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth), even as he used the boy as a puppet in his own grab at power. Norton recalls that in his first conversation with showrunner Ryan Condal, “I said, ‘He cannot just be a kind of comic book villain, entirely defined by its manipulativeness.’”

The result is a quirky character—an egomaniac with a strong will, but a delicate constitution—that stops just short of caricature. It’s a razor-thin distinction with little margin for error, and Norton pulls it off so well that you’re almost sad to see Ormund go.

But in the season 3 finale, Ormund just had to go, making his last stand at the First Battle of Tumbleton, a sweeping and brutal action sequence that serves as the episode’s set piece. Ormund meets his end when Northern warlord Roderick (Tommy Flanagan) shoves a dagger up, well, his end before Ulf (Tom Bennett) flies overhead to ignite him like a dragonfire-roasted kebab. It’s a memorable death in a franchise full of memorable deaths, and one that Norton seemingly had a blast filming.

As he makes his exit, Norton talked to Men’s Health about the day he learned just how he’d go out, the logistics of filming an ass-stabbing, and what he’ll take away from his time in Westeros.

Two armored knights lead a group of soldiers, with banners and horses in a battlefield setting.

HBO

MEN’S HEALTH: Ormund’s fate is laid out in Fire & Blood, the book that House of the Dragon is based on. But the show has made changes and filled in gaps in a way that leaves room for surprises in every character’s story. At what point did you know the full scope of Ormund’s arc?

JAMES NORTON: I knew from the beginning. There was no wavering on the end for Ormund, this being a single-season, in-and-out job. There were details to work out about that final big sequence and the way he died, but generally it was all there on the page. What we discovered was the nuance within that. From the very beginning, we really wanted him to be this peculiar, enigmatic, charismatic, but also deeply menacing guy. The execution was left to me. So the frame was there from beginning to end, but they let me play inside the frame, if you know what I mean.

MH: Did knowing Ormund’s end affect your approach to developing or fine-tuning the character?

JN: That’s interesting—did Ormund’s impending death affect the way I played him? I think it probably did in some way, but I don’t know. There are different elements to Ormund’s personality at play. There is a sort of fatalistic element to Ormund. He has a fanatical self-belief, and belief in the Hightowers and their prominence, that carries through something of a suicide wish. He must on some level be aware that there’s no chance he’s going to ever win the Battle of Tumbleton. He was pitched against four huge dragons, and he only has Daeron’s one tiny dragon. He says that they have the upper hand, that they have the strategic advantage, but on some level he must have known that wasn’t the case. So I guess in some way, Ormund knows that he’s probably going to perish.

But then there’s another element to Ormund’s personality, which is absolute conviction that he is going to survive, that Daeron will be king, that he will be the puppeteer, and that he will ultimately reign in King’s Landing. Had Ormund survived the Battle of Tumbleton and carried on to season 4, could things have played out that way? We’ll never know. [Laughs]

MH: In this episode, we see the highest point and the lowest point in Ormund and Daeron’s relationship. The high point is when Ormund knights Daeron. How did you and Benjamin Evan Ainsworth want to play that moment?

JN: As authentically as possible. That was the key thing for me in the whole series—making sure that however ridiculous Ormund got, however villainous, that he was never a stock villain. Particularly at the end of episode 4, when he instructs Daeron to kill the blacksmith, you can lose a lot of the audience. The way to protect us from that was to show a kind of deep love [between Ormund and Daeron]. This boy has been in his home and under his tutelage for his whole life. There is a genuine love and pride there. Ormund obviously wants to be the Hand to Daeron, ultimately. He wants to be the puppeteer, the king in all but name. But at the same time, I really, really wanted to show a sense of paternal pride.

HBO

Norton with Ainsworth as Daeron Targaryen.

For me, it was very easy to play Ormund as having love for Daeron, despite his Targaryen blood. Ultimately, the boy in front of him is a good, diligent boy. For Ben, I think it was a harder job because Ormund is clearly such a monster. But we needed to have that reciprocal love, even if it’s a bit of Stockholm syndrome. Ormund is an abuser, but Daeron doesn’t know anything else. He’s been left in Old Town without his parents, without his mother, for so long. So those scenes where I clasp him on the shoulders, or the scene where I knight him, it was easy to look into the eyes of that brilliant actor and feel love and respect because he emanates such a goodness. We needed to have a tenderness at the heart of the relationship to make both characters work.

MH: It sounds like Ormund and Daeron’s relationship was central to grounding your portrayal of a character who is otherwise a larger-than-life figure.

JN: I think that’s what the show does really well: every big, slightly ludicrous, hammy moment is always offset by a counterpoint where you’re brought back to a very human story. Look at Ulf—Ulf is so funny, but there’s also such pain and yearning there. He wants to be respected. Tom [Bennett] does a brilliant job in gag after gag, then in one moment you’re left with him and the camera lingers and you just think, Fuck, this poor, poor man.

The best filmmakers—for me, people like Ruben Östlund [director of Triangle of Sadness] and Sean Baker [director of Anora]—they play so well with tone. You can have a laugh-out-loud comedic moment followed by something really painful and human. House of the Dragon does that really successfully.

MH: The low point in their relationship is of course Daeron’s betrayal, when he and Gwayne try to broker peace with the Blacks behind Ormund’s back, and he finds out by chance while scouring the city for Ulf, another pawn he’s lost control of. How did you approach this bookend in Ormund and Daeron’s story?

JN: I leaned on that feeling of betrayal by a family member, a boy, a kid who I raised. That scene is an example of how it’s always a bit of a shame the audience doesn’t get to see the 10 different versions we shot. There were a couple of versions of that moment where we went really emotional. I remember catching my breath and almost shedding a tear. I got very misty-eyed. It didn’t work for the scene; for various reasons they didn’t choose those takes. But regardless, in that moment, all I was thinking of was what it feels like when someone you love betrays you. It fucking hurts—villain, hero, whatever you are. I remember tapping into reference points I had in my own life where I got betrayed. Unfortunately, everyone’s got a couple. That takes you back to the human story: the boy who I thought loved me turned his back on me, and it hurts.

James Norton and Tom Bennett in House of the Dragon

HBO

Norton with Bennett as Ser Ulf White.

HBO

Flanagan as Ser Roderick.

MH: You have a memorable death, even by Game of Thrones standards. What was your reaction when you first found out how you were going to go out?

JN: If you want a memorable death, have Tommy Flanagan thrust a dagger up your ass a couple of times! [Laughs] That’s definitely going to stick in people’s minds. Initially, that part didn’t exist. I think I can credit Rowley Irlam, who’s our stunt coordinator. I’ve worked with him before; he’s fucking amazing. Ormund didn’t have many stunts—he’s a very cerebral man, mostly sitting over a new strategy laid out on a big table—but that particular battle sequence with Tommy did take a lot of rehearsal. They really do drill you. And it’s necessary. I mean, for that one sequence, I must have had seven or eight long stunt rehearsals.

At one point early on in those rehearsals with Rowley, I remember coming in and he was grinning like a Cheshire cat. “We’ve had an idea! What we want to do is thrust the dagger up your ass.” At one point it was like 20 thrusts! Then we were like, Wait, that’s too much. Then there were lots of conversations about the angle, will it penetrate, the length of the dagger….

That whole sequence was really fun, really memorable to shoot with Tommy. He’s a cool motherfucker. He turns up every day in his full costume, armor, everything else—and he wears these gangster sunglasses and he just struts. He’s got this amazing aura.

What I also liked is that, if you dissect the sequence, the reason that Ormund slips up is because of his intolerance of blood and the smell of gore. He starts vomiting, and that gives Roderick the opportunity to smash him in the face. Although I guess Ulf was always going to come and burn the shit out of us all anyway. Ultimately, both of us die in dragonfire, screaming together. One of us is dismembered, the other has a dagger up his ass. There was something kind of intimate about the way we both perished in the same ball of flame.

MH: And then you spend your final scene as a charred corpse. How was that for a farewell?

JN: Credit to the makeup and prosthetics teams. In a world of AI, they probably could have done some kind of AI-CGI botch job for that final glimpse of Ormund, but this show would never go there. We had multiple tests putting together the prosthetics, and then it took five hours to put on. It looked incredible; I couldn’t believe it. I’d never worn a prosthetic like that. I’m really pleased with how I went out. It’s been quite a big thing to sit on for so long—not just that he dies, but the way he dies.

HBO

MH: Ormund was around for just one season, but it was a hell of a season. What will you remember most about the character?

JN: I will always remember the character’s intolerance to smell. I have a strange intolerance to things like chewing. I have this thing called misophonia, where the sound of mastication makes me really quite edgy. I read about it and found out it’s actually a thing! And now I’ve become way more versed in talking about it because of all the jokes around Ormund’s pomander, the lavender spray that we were using, and all that kind of stuff. I got to talk about it both in press interviews and on set because it’s something I share with him.

MH: And what will you remember about your time in Westeros?

JN: When I think back on this job in a few years’ time, I’ll remember how in such a short in-and-out, I was able to experience the [Song of Ice and Fire] universe in all its glory. Shows like this—the scale, the money, the commitment, the attention to detail, the loyalty and focus of each department—they are rare. I got to see the machine at work. I got to have fun playing the extremes of tone. I got to have a Big Death. It’s often very fun playing a villain, but Ormund, too, loved being Ormund.

MH: I just watched a video of you giving viewers a tour of the Tumbleton set. You really did seem in awe of it.

JN: Yeah, I did a little video—the tour of Tumbleton. And there was another video where I gave a tour of the production’s armory. I wanted to convey how powerful it is, the love that the crew, the filmmakers, and the fans have for this world. When you walk around one of the sets, you see how everything is so thought-through and detailed. My armor had the Seven carved into it! Everyone working on House of the Dragon goes so much further than they need to because they really love the world of the show. It made me want to do my best work because you want to match everyone. If one department ups their game because of the love for the material, then everyone else ups their game. Then you’re all helping each other do your best work. It’s a true creative collaboration and that’s what really makes it sing.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Watch House of the Dragon Here

William Goodman is a freelancer writer, focused on all things pop culture, tech, gadgets, and style. He’s based in Washington, DC and his work can also be found at Robb Report, Complex, and GQ. He’s yet to meet a jacket or cardigan he didn’t love. In his free time, he’s probably on Twitter (@goodmanw) or at the movies.