Emilia Clarke gave Targaryen advice to the House of the Dragon actors

House of the Dragon is HBO’s follow-up show to Game of Thrones, and the network has a lot riding on it. After all, Game of Thrones was the most successful show in the network’s history. It wants to deliver more of that, but also wants the new to series to stand on its own two feet.

House of the Dragon is set some 200 years before Game of Thrones and stars a completely new cast, so it will be a different experience. But there will still be continuity between the series. Some of the new cast members even talked to the stars of the previous show to get their bearings, as Olivia Cooke (Alicent Hightower) told The Hollywood Reporter.

Cooke said she texted with Maisie Williams (who played Arya Stark) and Emma D’Arcy (who stars as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen) had dinner with Clarke. “[M]e and Maisie [Williams, who played Arya Stark] had a few texts,” she said. “I worked with Maisie when I was 18 and she was like 15, so I’ve known her for a long time.” And apparently Emma D’Arcy, who plays the indomitable Rhaenyra Targaryen, had dinner with Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen), queen to queen. “Emma gleaned a lot of knowledge from that, and Emilia from what Emma said was really generous,” Cooke said.

Matt Smith on Targaryen wigs: “Bloody hell, how am I going to act through that?”

Matt Smith, who plays the mercurial Daemon Targaryen, also met with Emilia Clarke to get advice; based on what he told THR, we suspect he had some questions about the platinum blonde wigs, which he did not know how to handle at first. When he first saw himself in the wig, which takes “ages” to affix to his head, he thought, “Bloody hell, how am I going to act through that?”

"I was like, ‘How can I act through this blonde wig?’ because all you can see is the blonde wig when you first put it on…But it’s like anything, you get used to it and learn to ignore it. It was cool in the end, I’ve got three sorts of distinct haircuts in this, which is lucky because everyone else has just one thing all the time."

The enormous sets also help set the tone for the actors. Cooke remembers walking around the Red Keep set and being bowled over. “[I]t’s almost like they don’t really know how to make TV or film — they’ve just built the whole thing as one castle,” she said. “It’s like no, no, you can have separate rooms! [But with the sets] you can do just one big long tracking shot all the way through the castle, it’s amazing.”

Paddy Considine (King Viserys Targaryen) was “possessive” of the Iron Throne

And then there are the props. It sounds like Paddy Considine, who plays King Viserys I Targaryen, got into the spirit of playing a king pretty easily after setting eyes on the Iron Throne. “Paddy was so possessive,” said Eve Best, who plays Rhaenys Targaryen, a woman who was once a candidate to become queen but was passed over.

Other cast members confirm that Considine had no intention of letting the other actors sit on his throne. “As soon as I saw the Iron Throne in rehearsals I ran straight up to it and plonked my ass on it. But on set, Paddy was quite territorial, so when he wasn’t looking I’d do a quick [sit],” Cooke said. “It was just an aura, just a feeling that you got like, ‘OK, maybe don’t go up.’”

Steve Toussaint (Corlys Velaryon) also got that feeling. “It was like it was his,” the actor said. “At one point I said to him — because my character has a throne too, but it’s nowhere near like that — I said, ‘You can sit on mine if I can sit on —’ and he was like, ‘Nah.’”

I can’t decide if that’s annoying on-set behavior from Considine or if it’s a good thing that he was so into character. The cast is taking it in stride, anyway. Toussaint remembers that Considine kept up his possessiveness even with the replica Iron Throne at Comic-Con. “He shifted me again!” Toussaint exclaimed. “I was shooting it and then he walked up with that big grin of his and I was like, ‘OK, I’ll leave.’”

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