House Of The Dragon Star Torches Fans As 'F-ing Horrible'
The fiery clapback is already stirring up fresh drama around HBO's hit prequel, proving the battles off-screen might be even nastier than the ones in Westeros.
House of the Dragon is in the trenches on Season 3, and Olivia Cooke just used her coffee break to say the quiet part out loud about the fandom. Short version: she appreciates the love. Some of the rest of it has been, in her words, f-ing horrible.
Olivia Cooke calls out the ugly side of the fandom
Cooke, 31, who plays Alicent Hightower, spoke to The Hollywood Reporter while on a break from filming. She says plenty of fans have been lovely. Others? Not so much. She describes people asking for a photo and then immediately telling her they hate her character, sometimes with real malice. And she is not pretending that is normal.
'Some of the fans have been f-ing horrible to our cast. It makes me really angry that we’re then supposed to just bow down and pay obeisance to these people that only want to say the most debased, hate-filled things.'
She adds that the cast has each other’s backs. Emma D’Arcy, she says, gets a lot of well-earned love. And Matt Smith has seen enough fandom storms to take it on the chin and not let it stick.
Where Season 3 stands right now
Cooke did not spill plot details (shocking, I know), beyond one eyebrow-raising tidbit: there is a battle filming right now. After that, the show heads into its long, meticulous post-production process. Translation: don’t expect HBO to slap a date on it yet. There is still no release window.
- Season 3 is still shooting; a major battle sequence is underway
- Then it moves into careful, time-consuming post-production
- No release date yet
- Cooke appreciates the good interactions but says some fan behavior has been actively toxic
- She praises Emma D’Arcy and Matt Smith for how they handle the frenzy
Alicent’s endgame after Season 2 (and why fans are split)
End of last season, Alicent tried to cut through the chaos by going to Dragonstone to talk directly with Rhaenyra. Rhaenyra’s stance was blunt: a son for a son. Alicent, reading the board, accepted. The idea on the table was essentially this: Rhaenyra comes for King’s Landing and the throne, while Alicent escapes with her inner circle. In theory, that leaves Aegon out of the lifeboat, because he is the son she would be trading. That complicated, ice-cold calculus is exactly why the character sets people off. She is cornered and powerless one minute, quietly dangerous the next.
How Cooke sees Alicent
Cooke is protective of Alicent, and you can tell she has done the homework. In her read, Alicent grew up inside a rigid, patriarchal system and was effectively programmed by her father to serve the family line above all else. That conditioning, plus the mess her kids create, explains the hard choices. Cooke knows the character stirs up huge reactions, but her goal has always been to play Alicent with as much complexity and empathy as possible.
Bottom line: Season 3 is still cooking, the battle drums are literally beating, and the Alicent discourse is not calming down anytime soon. As someone who also watched Bates Motel, I’ll just say Cooke has a talent for playing people who carry a lot more than they let you see. Seems fitting here.