Is it something about them, as an individual?
Is it something about the relationship between your characters?
What do you focus on?
OLIVIA COOKE: Ultimately, just the humanity in the characters.
Yes, that reality exists in Westeros, in Kings Landing.
We were swaddled because we couldnt even have visitors to set.
Image via HBO
For 11 months, we really got to keep all of that fear and responsibility at the door.
COOKE: It was willful ignorance, wasnt it?
DARCY: It was.
Image via HBO
Miguel Sapochnik, on of our co-showrunners, kept saying, This is the good bit.
It wont be like this.
COOKE: Whos to say.
Image via HBO
We dont know whats to come.
Did you ever have a moment of panic, where you wondered what youd gotten yourself into?
Is it always just about staying connected to the character?
COOKE: For me, it was at Comic-Con.
I was like, Can we go back in time?
DARCY: How do I get off?
While we were making it, I never really had that, partly because there was no time.
Ask me in three months.
DARCY: Targaryens and their dragons are a relationship that starts at birth.
For Rhaenyra, dragons are so embedded within Targaryen identity and power, and history.
So many of Rhaenyras questions are about self-actualization and identity.
What is the turning point for Alicent, where her priorities shift?
COOKE: Its incredibly bad parenting.
Alicent has been groomed, from a very early age, solely to further her fathers political ambitions.
When Alicent is used as a pawn, shes a child.
She doesnt know any better.
DARCY: Thats the whole thing.
Its that early relationship that enables feelings of betrayal, of loss, of resentment, and of jealousy.
The foundation for all of that is in the childhood friendship.
How do you wrap your head around that?
Does she ever get to a place where she wants the title and position?
DARCY: Thats such a good question.
It all starts unraveling, the moment that suddenly the rules change.
Things that she would have gotten away with yesterday, have completely different ramifications today.
Where does her power come from?
COOKE: Targaryens think theyre godlike.
Shes acutely aware that she feels differently from the way she is read.
Shes able to fold all questions into a question of identity.
If that desire to be known is big enough, it will essentially go to any end.
House of the Dragonairs on Sunday nights on HBO and is available to stream at HBO Max.
