Warning: This article contains spoilers fromHouse of the Dragonepisodes 1-5.
It was the first time they were to meet in person, and Cooke was running late.
“I completely forgot and just gave everyone a hug.
Emma D’Arcy (L) and Olivia Cooke (R) play adult versions of Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower on ‘House of the Dragon.'.Ollie Upton/HBO
I think everyone was like, ‘Whoa!’
I was like, ‘Oh no!
The rest of the dinner was much more smooth.
Emma D’Arcy stars as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen in ‘House of the Dragon.'.Ollie Upton/HBO
They mostly discussed their families.
Cooke remembers Sapochnik and Condal bringing up how both their kids were now relocated in London.
“You know those chance meetings where there’s a familiarity?
Olivie Cooke appears as Alicent Hightower in ‘House of the Dragon.'.Ollie Upton/HBO
For some unknown reason, I really felt that with Liv,” D’Arcy, 30, explains.
Cooke agrees, “We hit it off right away.”
The other emotion was more of a sobering tonic.
Olivia Cooke’s Alicent Hightower stares down Emma D’Arcy’s Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen in HBO’s ‘House of the Dragon.'.Ollie Upton/HBO
“It was the first moment where I was like, ‘Oh Christ, man.
This might actually happen,'” D’Arcy says of the reality of the show setting in.
I hadn’t met anyone new for about a year.
It was a really, really surreal evening.”
This was the calm before their own storm of swords would begin on screen.
Neither D’Arcy nor Cooke discussed much of their roles with Alcock and Carey.
They were discouraged by the showrunners from doing so.
But ultimately, the adult versions of these characters have evolved quite a bit out of their teen years.
“They have privilege, but they don’t have power.
How do we pay attention to them at least seeking command of their own lives?”
“We understand how othering works.
We see it every day in 2022,” D’Arcy remarks.
That feels really unusual to me.
How do you convince an electorate that you’re not other?
Cooke has a similar sentiment.
“Our bodies [as women] continue to be politicized,” she says.
At the same time, Rhaenyra is a Targaryen.
You don’t want to wake the dragon.
It’s something she shares with Viserys, who the actor notes is similarly flawed.
“Both of them have a huge capacity for stubbornness,” D’Arcy elaborates.
“They’re both terrible communicators.
So they spend a lot of time at an impasse.
I just couldn’t be asked to go down that road.”
And also just moralistically where she stands when she isn’t listening to her father anymore."
But a fire remains brewing within her.
Cooke believes it stems from the comparisons made between Alicent and Rhaenyra for so many years.
Amoment between the two in episode 4is a poignant illustration.
“Alicent has been completely bred to breed, and to breed powerful men.
That’s her only function in this life,” Cooke says.
Unless you’re fighting the men, you’ll never be heard.
It’s learning to live within this straightjacket of oppression.
How do I move inch by inch every single day to loosen the straps?"
Those straps are pretty loose by the time Cooke makes her debut as Alicent.
“To have one child like that is a mistake.
It speaks to how Alicent, too, is a powder keg ready to explode.
“Rhaenyra can just get away with anything, and it’s so fine.
She looks around her family, and they’re all f—ed up.
She’s like, ‘I’ve been so perfect all my life.
I haven’t taken a step wrong, and it doesn’t f—ing matter.’
I think what we see in her evolution is this complete existential crisis.”
It was important for Cooke to find that “humanitarian hook” with Alicent.
But Cooke wanted to understand why the queen does what she does.
“She does some f—ing despicable stuff,” she admits.
“But then you’ve got to think, she’s trying to protect her son.
She’s trying to uphold the patriarchy.
She’s trying to uphold the legitimacy of the crown.
All these things that she feels are so much bigger than she is.
It’s also about this gaping, festering wound left by Alicent’s falling out with Rhaenyra.
It all comes back to these two women.
Cooke muses over the idea of friendships lost.
There’s so much that you don’t get closure over like you would with a romantic relationship.
[Rhaenyra] was her only friend, and she’s so lonely.
It’s just a really lonely existence.”
The same cannot be said for D’Arcy and Cooke.
“I’m just too sensitive.”
“I think it helps that I really like her,” D’Arcy says of their costar.
“There’s a ground there in that we are really good friends and I adore her.”
