We may be between seasons of House of the Dragon, but fortunately there are still other opportunities to catch its magnificent cast in other projects in the interim. Emma D'Arcy, Rhaenyra Targaryen herself, stopped by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon this week to promote their new movie Digger, where they play the assistant to Tom Cruise's titular eccentric oil tycoon.
Yet while D'Arcy was there for Digger, they spent much more time talking about House of the Dragon. That's no surprise; they play a relatively minor role in the Tom Cruise movie, which is currently bombing at the box office in historic fashion. But in the realm of Westeros, they're second to none. Fallon had all sorts of questions about how D'Arcy landed the role and their process for learning the show's complicated High Valyrian lines. It's a fun interview; watch it below:
Photos of Emma D'Arcy's HOTD audition wigs revealed for the first time
The most notable thing about this interview to me was when D'Arcy talked about their audition process for House of the Dragon. We heard about this back when the show was originally going into production, but for the first time ever, we have pictures to go with them. D'Arcy auditioned during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, so their self-tape was done at home with the help of their partner. Then showrunners Miguel Sapochnik and Ryan Condal were impressed with D'Arcy's acting from the tape, but needed help truly envisioning them in the role of Rhaenyra because their hair was cut very short at the time. So they asked the the actor to don a wig and re-record.
"They couldn't imagine it. It was unimaginable," D'Arcy joked, about the showrunners' ability to simply picture them with long hair instead of needing the proper wig recording. Since this was in the middle of lockdown, D'Arcy couldn't simply go buy a wig. Thankfully, they had a "bag of hair" on hand, and it was "in their own color."
That's because the hair was actually D'Arcy's own, which was cut off during a previous production they'd worked on. "So I had once done a job, and they had cut my hair while I was on another job. Wasn't supposed to happen. And the kind of consolation was like...you know, worst case scenario, here you go," they said with a laugh.
D'Arcy clarified that this was "literally a bag of hair, with pieces of weft with no way of attaching them to your head." That might have stymied some less enterprising actor, but D'Arcy and their partner used to run a "fringe theater company," so they were very good at improvising "ill-advised" solutions to unusual problems.
Emma D'Arcy revealed photos on the Tonight Show of the homemade wigs they used for their #HouseOfTheDragon self-tape auditions during lockdown. They were made with pieces of D'Arcy's own hair, which was cut off during a previous job. It took three attempts to land on the one. pic.twitter.com/C9UIWJudmJ
— Winter Is Coming (@WiCnet) October 7, 2026
So they bought a few supplies like clips and a hot glue gun at the local supermarket, and got to work crafting wigs. It took three attempts before they landed on one that convinced the showrunners of House of the Dragon that D'Arcy was right for Rhaenyra. It's a fun bit of behind-the-scenes lore for one of the biggest fantasy shows of our time, and I love that the actual photos of D'Arcy's various wig attempts are now out there on the internet for all time.
Even funnier, D'Arcy didn't even tell Condal and Sapochnik what they were doing to create the wigs at the time, because it would have been "humiliating." But hey, time makes all stories more amusing, and that's certainly the case here. By this point, few characters in all of Westeros have worn more elaborate wigs than Rhaenyra Targaryen, so it's safe to say that D'Arcy nailed it.
Emma D'Arcy breaks down their process for learning High Valyrian lines
D'Arcy also spoke a bit about how they learn lines in High Valyrian for the series. While we've heard plenty of the fictional language over the years, few actors have had to master quite so many lines as D'Arcy, especially in House of the Dragon's third season. The fifth episode contains a scene which D'Arcy and their co-star Matt Smith considered their "High Valyrian oral exam," on account of how many lines they had to learn.
So how do they go about it? "There's a process," D'Arcy said. "They send recordings, and they send the High Valyrian and they send a phonetic version, and they send a translation, they send a direct translation... So yeah, I draw everything really big on bits of paper. I stick them on the wall."
Fallon then showed off a picture of a wall full of High Valyrian cue cards D'Arcy made, which were for the aforementioned scene in season 5 where Rhaenyra and Daemon meet in the Grand Sept. He marveled not only at how D'Arcy learns the pronunciations themselves, but the meaning behind all of the words well enough to play the scenes convincingly.
"So I would look at this, and on the reverse, it will say the English direct translation," D'Arcy explained. "And as I'm doing it, I will use kind of like gesture to try and like...plug in the socket in terms of a new word, meaning."
It's clear that this arduous process worked wonders; D'Arcy and Smith's High Valyrian scenes in season 3 were exceptional, and it always felt like they understood exactly what they were saying. It's fun to get a glimpse into how it all came together!
You can catch Emma D'Arcy in Digger, now playing in theaters. As for House of the Dragon, it is slated to begin pre-production on its fourth and final season sometime this month, with filming kicking off in Spring 2027. Look for it to premiere in 2028.
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