House of the Dragon star teases complex, contradictory characters

English actor Olivia Cooke is at the head of House of the Dragon, HBO’s spinoff of Game of Thrones. Set over a hundred years before the original show, it tells the story of the Dance of the Dragons, a brutal civil war that pitted different factions of the Targaryen family against each other. Cooke plays Alicent Hightower, the wife of King Viserys I Targaryen (Paddy Considine) and the mother of (most of) his children. When the king dies, Alicent wants her first son by King Viserys to sit the Iron Throne, but Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy), the king’s eldest born child by his first wife, feels it’s hers to sit.

It’s a messy conflict where there are few clear good guys and bad guys, which is a good fit for this series. Still, I was worried that showrunners Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik might shy away from this complexity, since it’s harder to get your head around than a simple conflict between good and evil. But based on what Cooke told Collider, it sounds like they’re embracing the gray areas of the story.

Obviously Cooke couldn’t reveal too much about the series (“I don’t know if I can say anything without really giving it away”), but she did say that her character is “very complex.” She thinks “it will take some time” for the audience to fully understand her motivations. “I think people are gonna want to see the worst in her.”

"What’s amazing about Game of Thrones, like we saw in the past series, is that one season, you hate a character, and the next, you absolutely love them and will go to the ends of the earth for them. You just don’t know what you’re gonna get with these characters. They’re so well-written. Such is the human condition, you can do some horrendous things, but then you can also do some wonderful things as well. It’s very complex, and it’s not black and white at all."

I think of characters like Jaime Lannister when she says that. Who would have thought a character could push a child out a window in the series premiere and go on to become a fan-favorite? I don’t know if we’ll see quite that kind of turnaround in House of the Dragon, but it’s filled with the same sort of knotty complexity, of characters capable of both great good and great evil. That’s the kind of stuff I loved on the original show and I’m happy to hear it sounds like it’s continuing here.

House of the Dragon is gorgeous: “The artistry involved is mind-blowing”

Naturally, Game of Thrones is on Cooke’s mind as she films the new series, although the fact that it’s set so far in the past gives her some breathing room. “We’re in the world of Game of Thrones, but you can also put yourself in a different headspace as well and know that, for an actor, you don’t have to necessarily follow on from what anyone else is doing. But at the same time, yeah, it’s utterly bizarre, after the year or year and a half, of fucking 10 years that we’ve had, looking down and just being like, ‘What am I wearing? What am I doing? This is mad.'”

"The crew is a hundred strong. The artistry involved is mind-blowing. The sets that have been created are fucking gorgeous, and the costumes. Down to the tiny prop that you hold in your hands, there’s just so much thought that goes into it and so much history as well. It’s amazing to work on a film, a TV show, or anything where everyone is just so passionate about it."

Is anyone else feeling the hype? There’s no guarantees until the show is actually on our screens, but stuff like this makes it sound really good.

House of the Dragon premieres on HBO sometime in 2022.

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