House of the Dragon stars talk all things wigs

Over the course of eight seasons of Game of Thrones, Daenerys Targaryen’s platinum blonde hair became iconic, to the point where a lot of people probably don’t realize that actor Emilia Clarke is a stone cold brunette. Of course, the platinum hair was a wig, and a complicated one: it took a long time to get Clarke into that getup.

Rather than pull back on that aspect, HBO decided to lean in with House of the Dragon, a show all about the Targaryen dynasty. Why have one character with complicated, impossibly blonde hair when you can have dozens? The wigs will be out in force in this new series, and it’s all the cast members can do to keep up. “The wigs!” exclaimed actor Eve Best (Rhaenys Targaryen) when talking to Entertainment Weekly. “It’s a number to get into them — and then get out of them.”

Emma D’Arcy, who plays lead character Rhaenyra Targaryen, will have to spend more time than most in those platinum rugs, so it’s a good thing they’ve taken to them. “I love wearing a wig, it turns out,” D’Arcy said. “It’s just so transformative.”

House of the Dragon wigs get splattered with blood and gunk

That said, it was a journey for D’Arcy to get to that point. The actor said they “lived as Rhaenyra for about three months” during the COVID-19 pandemic as they recorded “rounds and rounds of self tapes” for the audition, and at one point had to improvise some homemade hair. “Somewhere in the midst of that, I got on a Zoom call with [showrunners] Miguel [Sapochnik] and Ryan [Condal], and Miguel asked me if I had a wig,” recalled D’Arcy, who normally has short hair. “Do I look like a person who owns a wig?”

"And this is mid-pandemic where the only things that are open are supermarkets. All I had were some hair extensions left over from a job. No way of attaching them to me, no idea how to do that. For 24 hours, me and my partner just tried — I can’t put more emphasis behind that word. My hair was about as long as it is now. We hot glued these hair extensions to these wig grips. We would send photos to Miguel, and we thought we’d cracked it. And he said, ‘Can you keep trying?’ We kept trying until we found something that gave me the illusion I had long hair. And then, every time we taped after that, I would sit in front of the telly, and my partner would do my hair extensions for an hour and a half before we taped anything."

Non-Targaryen cast members like Olivia Cooke (Alicent Hightower) have it easier, since her character’s brown hair at least resembles hues found in the real world. All she had to work with were a few extensions here and there, although she respects those who had to play the game of wigs, which can be a messy business. “And then you’ve got all the battle scenes where the wigs get destroyed from all the blood and the gunk that’s being thrown around,” she said. “You can just see the despair from the hair and makeup team.”

House of the Wigs premieres on August 21 on HBO and HBO Max.

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