This year, HBO debuted House of the Dragon, a Game of Thrones prequel series set over 100 years before the original show. It was an immediate hit…but if we’re being honest, the biggest thing to come out of it so far was a viral clip where stars Emma D’Arcy (Rhaenyra Targaryen) and Olivia Cooke (Alicent Hightower) discussed their favorite drinks:
For the record, I reject any attempt to rationally explain why this clip blew up so much. Sometimes things just go viral and that’s the way of it. And according to her interview in Bazaar, Cooke is just as baffled as I am. “I’d never heard of [a negroni sbagliato] and now the world has twice over,” she said. “I was in the pub the other day and a Spanish girl held the door open for me and went, ‘Stunning!’”
This kind of thing can happen when you’re in the public eye, and given House of the Dragon’s success, Cooke is definitely in the public eye in a way she wasn’t before, even with a decent number of screen acting credits under her belt. “It’s different, for sure,” she said. “When my episodes aired, I was subject to an immediate visibility that I hadn’t experienced before when I was walking down the street. I’m so naïve, but I think I was purposely so because I didn’t want to confront this anxiety.”
"The Game of Thrones fans have been quite noisy, and having to block your ears and eyes from that has been a challenge. It’s like the school playground – you want to know what everyone is saying about you and what’s been said."
At first, Cooke followed that instinct and looked up comments about her performance on social media. Given how free people online often are with their unfiltered, under-thought, overly critical opinions, this is not generally advisable. “I was self-flagellating. It’s mad because what they’re talking about is this fantasy version of me that doesn’t exist whatsoever. People talk about you like they know you and it’s just so odd. All you can do is be as authentic as possible.”
Making House of the Dragon requires a lot of “mental stamina”
Cooke may change her strategy once filming gets underway on House of the Dragon season 2, which should come out in 2024. It’s a complicated show and it will take a while for HBO to put the new episodes together. “There are a lot of scenes that take two weeks to film. You have to have mental stamina, which I hadn’t experienced before,” Cooke said.
One thing the cast and crew could use going forward: a place to unwind after a long day of riding dragons and plotting coups. “The decompression is in the car on your way home from Watford. Emma and I were saying we need to find a local pub. There are so many productions filmed at Leavesden, I’m surprised they haven’t opened a bar. Not even to drink in, just to relax in before you take it all home. You want a severance from the show.”
That said, there were opportunities to decompress on set, some of them coming courtesy of the most unexpected of sources. “A lot of my scenes were with Fabien Frankel, and Rhys [Ifans, who plays Otto Hightower], who was just hysterical,” Cooke said. “He’s such a naughty little schoolboy and has this incredible ability to stay as serious and stoic as possible, but cause absolute mayhem for the rest of the cast.”
"It’s so important to have someone like that on set who is a disruptor; it keeps you on your toes and makes it a joy coming to work. He made up so many nicknames for Fabien that he would say just before a take, like, ‘Oi Tinder Swindler!’ Or, ‘Oi Justin Bieber!’ And then it’ll be, ‘Action’. I’d suddenly be in character saying to him, ‘Don’t kill Rhaenerya, please.’"
Who would’ve thought the guy playing Otto Hightower was the funniest person on set? You never know.
The House of the Dragon cast is “really close”
The cast is pretty tight outside the show, too. Cooke said she was looking forward to sharing a “Christmas pint” with Ifans, and that she was going out for dinner with D’Arcy and Milly Alcock, who play the older and younger versions of Rhaenyra Targaryen respectively. “We’re all really close,” she said of the cast.
Now it’s just a matter of keeping this train rolling. “Often, you do a job and you wonder how it’s going to be perceived, but this superseded all of our expectations,” Cooke said. “Now we’ve just got the pressure of season 2…”
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