After building its characters’ relationships in season one, season two of HBO’s House of the Dragon will see its leads flung across Westeros — much to the disappointment of its close-knit cast.
The second season of the Game of Thrones prequel will continue to chronicle the House Targaryen civil war, as Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy), Prince Daemon (Matt Smith) and their Dragonstone forces face off against Alicent (Olivia Cooke) and her children for claim of the Iron Throne. But that means the stars were often off shooting their own individual storylines this year, rather than group scenes together.
At the show’s New York premiere on Monday, D’Arcy admitted filming without Smith and Cooke was “kind of lonely” but noted, “There’s so many beautiful actors on the show, it’s an ever-mutating thing. Certainly, I think it’ll make the active viewership kind of more exciting because there are so many parts to the series that I’ve not had the chance to watch yet. So I get to watch as sort of a pure fan, these other narrative strands.”
They added of missing their two co-stars, “It really makes you know what you lost, I suppose — every time we do get to work [together], it’s a great privilege and very exciting and very thrilling and nourishes something because it sort of feels old. So much of us making the first series, well for me, was falling in love with them — with Matt, with Liv, with other members of the cast — so anytime you get joy in that is a treat. But shows have to move on, I think that’s what keeps it exciting, and there are different gravitational pulls this season for [Rhaenyra].”
With Daemon leaving Dragonstone to go fight, that also meant fewer scenes between D’Arcy and Smith, as Smith echoed, “It was a shame, I missed them terribly because I love being around them; not only are they a wonderful actor, they’re a wonderful person to sort of knock about with every day. So I missed them, but it was what the story required. Daemon is off on his own path trying to figure things out, kind of head first into the dark hole of his own consciousness, into the abyss, and I think Rhaenyra feels a great sense of betrayal.”
On the other side of the battle, Cooke was also missing co-star Paddy Considine, who played King Viserys to her queen in season one, and whose death kicked off the war.
“It was strange, man,” Cooke told The Hollywood Reporter of doing the show without him. “Paddy is such a big presence and such a formidable actor, and he really brought this gravitas to the Red Keep, and we sort of missed his walking onto set, doing his Alan Partridge impression and using his cane as a baton, twirling it around. He was greatly, greatly missed.”
At the event, Cooke and D’Arcy both also spoke about their Negroni Sbagliato meme that went viral when promoting season one of the show, as Cooke admitted, “It was just weird,” saying, “that was the most innocuous thing ever as well, like we were just trying to make each other laugh, and we said so much shit that day that that was the one that stuck.” D’Arcy added, “I’ve found it always hard to talk about because it just felt like something that had happened to someone else… I’m not that social media savvy, like I’m not hugely in the world of it, so I don’t know, it was a sort of strange mirage in my life for a while.”
House of the Dragon premieres June 16 on Max.
Neha Joy contributed to this report.
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