Olivia Cooke on Game of Thrones fan expectations for House of the Dragon

Game of Thrones was getting big right around the time that “spoiler culture” broke into the popular discourse. In fact, the show may have had a role in taking it mainstream. Whether fans were trying to hunt down Game of Thrones spoilers or doing their best to avoid them, they were on everyone’s mind, and that includes people on the production team. Towards the end of the series, it was so serious that actors could only read their scripts on an app that would then get rid of the script afterward, to make sure no one could leave it lying around a hotel room or something.

By the sound of it, the obsession with plugging potential leaks has carried over to House of the Dragon, the first of HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel shows. Olivia Cooke — who plays Alicent Hightower, a key figure in the Targaryen civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons — was trying to talk to The Sydney Morning Herald about her new comedy Pixie, but kept getting bombarded with questions she couldn’t answer.

• Has the series started filming? “Uh … no, not yet.”
• Does she know when it will start shooting? “Um … this year.”
• Do you know where it’s being filmed? “Oh God, I’m so nervous about giving anything away … I’m telling you, I don’t even know where we’re shooting it.”
• Have you gotten all the scripts? “Yes. Are you trying to get me killed?”

Leave Olivia alone!

Olivia Cooke tries to tune out Game of Thrones fan expectations ahead of House of the Dragon

But seriously, that’s pretty funny, and very in keeping with the spoiler-phobic vibe of latter-day Game of Thrones, which makes sense. For better or worse, Game of Thrones has created a lot of expectations for House of the Dragon, and they’ll probably follow Cooke and the rest of the cast for a long while.

That said, it sounds like she has the right approach to dealing with them: “I understand the responsibility, but also I can’t come into the job with the weight of all these fans on my back; I’d never do a good performance. I’ve got to kind of leave that at the door, because I’m never gonna please everyone with whatever I do in this role.”

House of the Dragon comes out in 2022. In the meanwhile, Cooke is getting excellent press for Sound of Metal, where she plays the lead singer of a metal band who’s drummer is going deaf. I can’t wait to see what she does with Alicent, which is a juicy part.

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