House Of The Dragon‘s breakout star Milly Alcock has been acting since she was a teenager, but she had never experienced anything like entering the Game of Thrones fandom. “It felt like that I had been literally picked up from Australia and someone had just dropped me in the middle of like the ocean with nothing around,” the actress recently explained to The Hollywood Reporter.
“I’d done Aussie television where our whole show’s budget is less than one episode [of Dragon]. I’d never been on a hundred-million-dollar set like that before,” she said, explaining that she shares traits with her character Rhaenrya, who is also going through a monumental life change. “Me and Rhaenyra had similar trajectories in our story — the way that we kind of navigated an unforeseen world we really expected to be in, and learned how to face those challenges.”
Despite the newfound responsibility, Alcock quickly became a fan favorite as the head-strong princess who is determined to do things her way. But, at some point in the season, Rhaenyra will be portrayed by Emma D’Arcy, as her older self. The two actresses wanted to meet, but they were discouraged from doing so thanks to director Miguel Sapochnik.
“Me and Emma were like, ‘Let’s meet up.’ We wanted to have a meeting with [Sapochnik] and have a discussion about Rhaenyra’s progression as a character,” Alcock explained. “And Miguel didn’t want us to meet — which was really interesting! So we never had that discussion. Miguel was like, ‘Just trust that you that you both have it.’ I think he was aware we would be trying to mimic each other.” Sapochnik was instead determined to keep them separate in order to make sure they didn’t feed off each other too much when it comes to the character.
It’s unclear if Alcock will continue to be shown in flashbacks once D’Arcy takes over, but hopefully, the two actresses were able to interact outside of their royal duties. Despite not meeting her other counterpart, Alcock was able to meet Emily Carey and Fabian Frankel before beginning filming. Plus, there are so many dragons to meet, it must be hard to keep track of everyone!
House of the Dragon airs on Sundays on HBO.
