The actor, who uses she/they pronouns, spoke to Newsweek about the scene which features her character Alicent Hightower and her father Otto, played by Rhys Ifans.
Emily Carey on ‘Believable’ ‘House of the Dragon’ Scene That Had Her in Tears
Episode 4 saw King Viserys I (Paddy Considine) strip Otto of his position as Hand of the King after he informed him that his brother Prince Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) and his daughter Princess Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock) had been seen together at a brothel.
The fifth episode follows the aftermath of this dismissal, with Otto warning Alicent to be wary of Rhaenyra because she could have Alicent and Viserys’s children killed in order to ensure her claim to the Iron Throne.
When reflecting on working with Ifans, Carey said that he was “hilarious” and “brilliant minded” as she said: “Just the way that he approaches the craft it’s outstanding, the way he performs it’s so immersive.
“I remember we were in rehearsal, it was one of my first times rehearsing one-on-one with Rhys and it was the scene towards the end of my journey as Alicent when I’m saying goodbye to him, and he grabs me and he’s basically saying, ‘Rhaenyra is going to put your children to the sword.’
“It’s this whole speech that sort of sparked that thing in her brain of ‘I need to know who my allies are, and I need to know what I’m doing so I know what to channel, I need to know who I’m protecting and who I’m not.’
“When he’s holding me, he’s looking at me and they hug, which is weird because they don’t hug normally. Usually when they’re trying to say that they love each other it turns into an argument, which it does at the top of that scene, they’re arguing and then they hug and we had so many discussions about how they got to that point but, Clare [Kilner, the episode’s director] was like, ’let’s not talk about it let’s do it.’
“So we were in the rehearsal room, we’re doing it and it made me so emotional, and Clare came over and she was like, ‘I’m not sure if Alicent is crying just yet in the scene, let’s talk’ I was like, ‘No, my children are going to die Clare!’” Carey said.
“I truly believed every word that was coming out of [Rhys’s] mouth, like when he’s looking at you, he makes you feel like you’re the only person in the room and as an actor that makes my job very, very easy because from where I’m stood, everything is so believable.”
House of the Dragon airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.
