Milly Alcock was “definitely shocked” playing the brothel scene on House of the Dragon

One of the most shocking scenes from the first season of House of the Dragon comes in Episode 4, “King of the Narrow Sea.” Daemon Targaryen has just returned in King’s Landing from a successful military campaign, and immediately starts hanging out with his teenage niece Rhaenyra, who is shopping around for suitable suitors. Hoping to woo her himself (the Targaryens are gross, just go with it), Daemon takes his niece out for a night on the town, a night that ends with a visit to a brothel.

Despite Daemon’s best efforts, nothing ends up happening between them at the brothel, but it’s still a wildly inappropriate uncle-niece outing. And if it was shocking to watch, filming it was a surprising challenge, as well.

What inspired the brothel scene in House of the Dragon?

Episode director Clare Kilner broke the sequence down to Collider. “Yeah, the brothel, it was really interesting because I had to really think carefully about that space and what we were going to do because Game of Thrones was shot a while back before Me Too, and also before I kind of stepped into my own power, in a way, as a woman,” she said. “In terms of really deciding how to shoot with the female gaze, I had to really question myself, ‘What is the female gaze? It’s crazy. I’m a woman, but I don’t know what the female gaze is.’ So, I sort of had to come back to, ‘What do I want? How do I want to express what is happening in this brothel?'”

"Basically, I tend to, when I direct, I like to try and personalize things, and I’ve never been to a brothel, but I did, when I was about 22, I was working in theater, and I was working in Berlin, and my deputy stage manager took me to this crazy club. It was a gay club, and he’s gay, and he took me down to the depths, through these corridors. He said, “You’ve got to come and see this. We’re meant to be together, you can’t really go in if you’re just going to look, but just come with me,” and he sort of took me down all through these corridors and opened these doors, and we ended up in this room, and he put his arms around me and sort of pretended we were together. It was just an incredible moment, and it stayed with me forever because it was this atmosphere that was absolutely thick with sex, but it was sort of poetic and mysterious, and quite shocking, you know?"

The brothel on House of the Dragon was an open-air space where people just kind of chose a dark corner and got down to business. It was uncomfortable to watch, but definitely exciting, which I imagine is how it was supposed to feel.

Matt Smith and Milly Alcock were kept in the dark about the brothel set

To create that atmosphere, Kilner and her team worked with the background actors to make sure everything onscreen had context. “[W]e created little stories for every single person,” Kilner said. “It was really important that they knew who they liked, who was the most powerful person in the room, what their story was, so it wasn’t just people sort of wandering around or just having sex in the background. They were moving from person to person, we sort of wanted it to be like a dance.

As for Matt Smith and Milly Alcock, they weren’t brought onto set until everything was ready, so the cameras could capture the genuine surprise. “And so I said to Matt and Milly, ‘I’m not going to bring you in until the day. I’m not gonna tell you what’s happening.'” If you saw shock on Milly Alcock’s face in particular, it wasn’t faked:

"So then, when Milly and Matt came in, they entered this situation and I said to them, “He’s going to be like, ‘Pretend you’re with me,’” and then it sort of evolved from there. I think Milly was definitely shocked when she walked into that room [laughs], so it paid off. And then, those two, they work really well together. They were just a dream. They’re just really wonderful actors. They want to be honest and truthful and find a connection."

Deliberately keeping the actors in the dark about the kind of set they’re walking into could be read as skeevey, but obviously everyone involved was being very professional, and hey, the scene was tremendously awkward, so mission accomplished.

Clare Kilner will return to direct episodes for House of the Dragon season 2, which is due out sometime in 2024, assuming the ongoing Hollywood strikes don’t get in the way.

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