Aemond nude scene, Milly Alcock cameo explained

HBO

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains major spoilers for Season 2, Episode 3 of HBO’s “House of the Dragon.”

With another episode of “House of the Dragon,” comes another funeral.

Shortly after the funeral of young Prince Jaehaerys, the Cargyll twins were buried following their brother versus brother duel last week. For the first time this season in “House of the Dragon,” no major characters died, except for a group of soldiers from House Blackwood and House Bracken during the Battle of the Burning Mill.

Although it happened off-screen, the first official battle of the Dance of Dragons took place and left hundreds of bodies strewn across the fields. Not far away, Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) arrived at the ancient, leaking Harrenhal Castle and took it without any bloodshed. Ser Simon Strong (Simon Russell Beale), immediately bent the knee to Daemon and offered him a humble supper in return (and accidentally proceeded to call him a prince instead of a king).

Long considered a cursed castle due to all the deaths that have ravaged its sacred halls, Harrenhal isn’t exactly a five-star hotel for Daemon (or even a two-star Airbnb). He begins to have disturbing visions, including one of a young Rhaenyra Targaryen (Milly Alcock reprising her role from Season 1) sewing Jaehaerys’ head back together. The vision marks Alcock’s first return to the series after playing Rhaenyra for the first half of Season 1.

King Aegon II Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney) officially makes Larys Strong (Matthew Needham) his Master of Whispers. Larys convinces the king that he shouldn’t join the war effort yet, while his new arm Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) leaves with Gwayne Hightower (Freddie Fox), the brother of Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke), and their troops. Tensions are high between the two knights, as Criston has just ousted Gwayne’s father, Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans), as the king’s arm. They narrowly survive an altercation with Daemon’s daughter, Baela Targaryen (Bethany Antonia), who was watching her dragon. On Dragonstone, the Dark Council advises Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) to gather an army, and she sends her youngest children, Joffrey, Viserys II and Aegon III, across the sea with Rhaena Targaryen (Phoebe Campbell) for safety .

Back in King’s Landing, Aegon spends a night of drunken debauchery with his Kingsguard pals and meets his brother Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell), who is cozying up naked with a prostitute.

“He needs a little love. He’s a broken boy, he needs someone to fix him. Season 1 was a rich series full of morally compromised gray characters. I wanted to introduce a character who, in those three episodes, that period of his life was just total darkness,” Mitchell said. Variety. “Someone asked me the other day if I thought Aemond had mommy issues, and I don’t know if he had mommy issues or if he just wanted his mom to love him a little. little more. Growing up, he never really felt that unconditional love. He had to find surrogate mothers elsewhere. He somehow found it in his dragon, Vhagar, this older dragoness, and he got it. also found in the madame’s house. But one may wonder whether it is sufficient or not, whether it is a worthy substitute.

The episode ends not with another fight scene, but with a surprise confrontation of words, as Rhaenyra sneaks into King’s Landing to talk to Alicent and try to avoid war. Disguised as a septa, Rhaenyra ambushes Alicent while she is praying in church. The two silently argue over who is King Viserys’ rightful heir and his misinterpreted prophecy of the “Promised Prince” in the Song of Ice and Fire. Director Geeta Patel, who also helmed the season 2 finale, speaks with Variety about the tense conversation, Aemond’s nude scene, and all the hate Criston Cole posted online.

The secret meeting between Rhaenyra and Alicent doesn’t appear in the original “Fire and Blood” book, and this is the first time we’ve seen them meet since last season. How did you create this whole new scene?

It was really helpful that you have this moment where your protagonists really confront each other. It was important to the writers that Rhaenyra and Alicent bring it home and be the backbone of the season, because that’s the backbone of the first season: the relationship of these two women. To expand the world, we wanted to be able to go back to that. What the writers and the actors did so well is that at the end of episode 3, they put episodes 1 and 2 in there. It’s almost like a litmus test: If 1, 2, and 3 work, you’ll feel it. If they don’t work, you won’t because it’s a lot of words.

A lot of the emotion in that scene comes from last season’s episode 8, which I was also lucky enough to direct, because that’s where Viserys proves to Rhaenyra that he loves her, and he puts her first because he gets up when he’s dying and walks through that throne room. That moment, while it’s quite visceral, carries over into season 2. When Rhaenyra goes to Alicent and says, “Hey, we need to stop this war,” I feel like she’s actually there selfishly for her own emotional reasons. “Did my father love me? Because I thought he did, and then he changed his mind about you. I’m not sure she’s aware of what’s motivating her. That scene is filled with all the drama of everything that’s come before it.

The previous two episodes ended with Blood & Cheese and the Cargyll twins fighting, but this conversation between Rhaenyra and Alicent was almost as tense. During filming, how did you construct this memorable moment, where they almost fight with their words?

When we shot that scene, we gave it as much time as possible. I knew that when you’re shooting something this massive and they’re running around doing different scenes for different episodes every day, it takes time for our actors to start really walking in that episode. We kept talking about Episode 8, we kept going back and revisiting those scenes and bringing them to life. When you see someone you haven’t seen in years and you had a conflict with them, or they remind you of something, it immediately becomes fresh. For example, I was bullied when I was 14, and if someone treats me badly now, at 48, everything feels like I’m 14 again. That was really important to bring to that stage. Everything comes back.

Between takes, we would go back to Episode 8 and the first half of the first season, to their childhood, and we would fill our memories with it, so that when they talk to each other, it’s not really about today, it’s about yesterday. It was such a beautiful and profound scene that it was like a fine wine. The more they did it, the deeper they got.

Milly Alcock also returns to the series for the first time in this episode. What was it like working with her and filming Daemon’s frightening vision?

I hadn’t worked with Milly in the first season, so it was interesting. When she and Matt came in, the first thing we talked about was their intimacy and how much they trusted each other with their feelings. The next part was getting into Daemon’s head, because up until that point, he was responsible for murdering someone but hadn’t dealt with it. The reason for that scene was for Daemon to confront himself and see himself in the mirror.

The whole season is a level of therapy for Daemon. He runs so fast that he never really stops to feel things. When she turns and looks at him, I wanted to make sure that without words he would be confronted because she sees him and knows him. What Matt did so well was he allowed himself to feel that moment. I remember crying during filming, because the way Matt portrayed Daemon’s pain as she looked at him, I felt remorse and regret – which we don’t see very often in Daemon.

Nudity and sex scenes have been a part of “Game of Thrones” since the beginning, but it’s rare to see a main character completely naked, let alone a male character. How did you shoot this very vulnerable scene and what was it trying to convey?

Ewan is a very good actor. He understands what he has to do to play Aemond. When I initially talked to him about the nudity, I said, “Let’s just walk through the story. If you’re not comfortable being naked, then you’re not going to be naked.” That way, we were both on the same page. We started walking through the movie and he introduced me to his character. A very important thing in directing is to surrender to the actors, and the actors surrender to each other. It’s a mutual surrender. In this case, Ewan knew his character so well that I was listening to him and walking with him as we went through each episode leading up to this one.

What we came to was that Aemond was injured. He was bullied when he was little. Ever since he was injured, he had created this persona that was the exact opposite of how he felt. He created the persona of someone who doesn’t care. That change, from someone being vulnerable to literally watching him put on his armor, was what we were looking for in that scene. It’s one of the few times where we see the young child in him and we see the pain in him. Slowly he begins to put on his armor and when he stands up, the fact that he doesn’t care that you see his penis is such a strong visceral change. And of course, Ewan said, “I want to be completely naked then.” It’s important to me because that’s who…