House of the Dragon is a massive television series. Over two seasons, the prequel to Game of Thrones has seduced viewers with its plotting, backstabbing, candlelit meetings about war, and massive sheep-munching dragons. Olivia Cooke\u2019s dad, however, did not get the memo.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re in London, on a stormy summer afternoon, and Cooke is sipping a bottle of neon juice (\u201cTell me if my teeth go purple\u201d). Her dad texted her yesterday. She gets her phone and pulls up a photo of a television screen, with the first season of House of the Dragon loaded up and ready to go. \u201cHe said: \u2018Raining outside, so starting a binge-watch.\u2019\u201d She laughs. \u201cI was like, great, Dad, worked on it for six years, hope you like, kiss kiss.\u201d What was his review? \u201cYes, I like it. Quite violent.\u201d He was planning to watch another episode after he\u2019d picked up Cooke\u2019s nephew from school.<\/p>\n
Cooke may be just 32, but to be fair to her dad, there is a lot of her work to catch up on. The actor grew up in Oldham. When she was 18, she moved to Vancouver to join the cast of another prequel, the Psycho spin-off Bates Motel<\/a>. After that, she lived in New York for a few busy but unhappy years, before moving back to London, just before the pandemic (shooting the film Pixie in Belfast, she realised: \u201cOh my God, I don\u2019t have to beat down my sense of humour any more\u201d). She has made movies, starring in Steven Spielberg\u2019s Ready Player One<\/a> and with Riz Ahmed in Sound of Metal<\/a>. She was a brilliant Becky Sharp in ITV\u2019s adaptation of Vanity Fair<\/a> and appeared briefly as the MI5 agent Sid in spy thriller Slow Horses. But House of the Dragon, in which she plays the scheming and morally murky Alicent Hightower, has been a gamechanger.<\/p>\n Watch the throne \u2026 Olivia Cooke. Photograph: Bartek Szmigulski<\/p>\n The series is based on the George RR Martin book Fire & Blood, and while it is never easy to be succinct about the world of Westeros, the rough gist of it is this: Alicent was childhood best friends with Rhaenyra Targaryen (played as an adult by Emma D\u2019Arcy), and betrays her by marrying Rhaenyra\u2019s father, King Viserys, to become queen. She then bore lots of ethically dubious blond heirs to the Iron Throne (season one), went to war with Rhaenyra for the crown after Viserys\u2019s death (season two), and, in the finale, waved the white flag and made a deal to give up her son to Rhaenyra, in order to support Rhaenyra\u2019s claim to be the true queen.<\/p>\n In short, you could say that as season three approaches, Alicent has a lot on her plate. One reviewer called her \u201cthe saddest woman in Westeros\u201d, but Cooke is not so sure that the description fits. \u201cI don\u2019t think she really has time to reflect on how she is feeling inside,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Alicent has been a divisive figure among fans of the show, particularly in the earlier days, when the character worked against Rhaenyra\u2019s claim to the throne. But Cooke has noticed that recently Alicent has been a focal point for some queer women and non-binary people. \u201cAlicent is a product of the patriarchy,\u201d she says. In season one, her marriage to the king was engineered by her father, though recent episodes have seen \u201can unravelling of everything that she\u2019s learned, and she\u2019s becoming liberated, in a sense. I don\u2019t want to say that she is living the queer experience, because she\u2019s definitely not, but I don\u2019t know if there\u2019s something that is relatable there.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Other viewers are less supportive. \u201cIt can be quite vitriolic at times. I don\u2019t want this to come across as \u2018Woe is me\u2019, because I\u2019m very grateful for the job,\u201d Cooke says, carefully, \u201cbut to field insults when you\u2019re just walking down the street \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n I assumed that it would be mostly digital, but it\u2019s in the real world, too? \u201cYeah! They want a picture with you, then afterwards, they\u2019ll say, \u2018I fucking hate your character, by the way,\u2019 or, \u2018Your character\u2019s a cunt.\u2019\u201d What do you say to that? \u201cI sort of laugh and say: \u2018Well, you can delete that picture,\u2019\u201d she shrugs. \u201cI don\u2019t know what you can do. I just try and take it in my stride.\u201d<\/p>\n Cooke got rid of her own Instagram six months ago. In person, she is funny and friendly, and when I ask her what made her ditch it for good, her reason is charmingly specific. \u201cI was sick of seeing 21-year-old looksmaxxers being like: \u2018If you follow a program, this is what you can do,\u2019 and it\u2019s a side-by-side picture of him at 14, going through puberty, and him now, saying: \u2018Look at the transformation.\u2019\u201d Her algorithm had picked up on her morbid fascination with physical extremes. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot. It\u2019s very navel-gazy, and it distorts your mental image of your body and your self. And I think that has trickled into our industry, as well.\u201d It was too much for her brain to handle, so she deleted her account and hasn\u2019t looked back.<\/p>\n double quotation markThere is a huge amount of talent to be found everywhere. It\u00a0can\u2019t just be the Harrow and Eton lot<\/p>\n For a short period of time, she was a meme herself. \u201cWas I?\u201d she says, looking suddenly panicked. Not recently, don\u2019t worry, I say, but the negroni \u2026 \u201cOh yes,\u201d she replies, visibly relieved. When Cooke and D\u2019Arcy were first promoting House of the Dragon, a clip of the pair discussing their favourite drinks went viral. D\u2019Arcy had said their drink of choice was a negroni sbagliato (\u201cwith prosecco in it\u201d). \u201cOoh, stunnin\u2019<\/a>,\u201d Cooke replied.<\/p>\n \u201cI just think it was interesting that in our attention-deficit economy, that after a very wide-ranging career, that was the thing I was most notable for,\u201d she says today. \u201cBut like everything, it lasted for about 15 minutes.\u201d Has she had to remove that word from her vocabulary? \u201cWhat, sbagliato? That was maybe the second time I\u2019d ever said it.\u201d<\/p>\n No, I mean \u201cstunning\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cOh! Maybe. Just initially. Out of annoyance.\u201d She has often said that she can be contrary. \u201cAnd I can get a bit of an attitude when it comes to these things, but it was all good-natured. It was just very bizarre.\u201d<\/p>\n Nuclear family \u2026 Cooke in The Girlfriend. Photograph: Christopher Raphael\/Prime<\/p>\n On the subject of unexpected hits, at the end of last summer Cooke starred in the very fun, very pulpy thriller The Girlfriend<\/a>, which turned out to be another smash. In it, her character, the ambitious estate agent Cherry Laine, went head to head with her boyfriend Daniel\u2019s mother, the rich art dealer Laura, played by Robin Wright<\/a>, who also directed the series (Laura thinks Cherry\u2019s a social climber; Cherry thinks Laura\u2019s a snob). It was moreish and addictive, but its success took Cooke by surprise, simply because there is so much TV coming out on streaming every week. \u201cI didn\u2019t expect it to capture people\u2019s attention like that.\u201d But she can see why it did. \u201cGirlfriend and mother-in-law relationships, that\u2019s quite potent. There\u2019s a lot of nuance and passive aggression to dig into and exacerbate and exaggerate.\u201d<\/p>\n As with Alicent, audiences were divided about whether they supported Cherry or Laura. Cooke\u2019s mum was on Cherry\u2019s side \u2013 \u201cI was like, yeah, because you can\u2019t differentiate between me and any character I play\u201d \u2013 though, given some of its more explicit scenes, her dad described it as \u201cbeing a bit like a radio play for him\u201d. Though considering that \u2013 spoiler alert \u2013 Laura had pretended her own son had died in order to get him away from Cherry, a shocking number of people were on the mum\u2019s side. \u201cBoy mums,\u201d says Cooke conspiratorially. \u201cA lot of boy mums were on Laura\u2019s side.\u201d<\/p>\n As well as all the flashy melodrama, it had a point to make about snobbery and the British class system. Daniel was from a rich family, and Cherry from a poor one. No matter how much she tried to fit in to his world, it was never quite good enough. \u201cTo try to get into those networks, it\u2019s like trying to cut through steel with a twig,\u201d says Cooke, poetically. \u201cIt\u2019s impossible to penetrate, and Cherry had to learn the hard way. But it\u2019s the same now. It\u2019s really hard to navigate the upper echelons of society. I mean, not that I would want to,\u201d she laughs. \u201cBut it\u2019s a whole culture to itself.\u201d<\/p>\n double quotation markI was the eldest daughter of two, and a child of divorce, so there was a lot of: look at me, love me<\/p>\n Cooke has spoken before about the challenges of being an actor from a working-class background, with a northern accent, and how the entertainment industry is built on the kind of networks and pre-existing connections that exist in those upper echelons of society. She jokes that her mum now scoffs whenever she refers to herself as working class. \u201cShe\u2019s like, you\u2019re not working class any more,\u201d she laughs. \u201cI think my sensibility is still working class. I just have become, against all odds, very successful in my field.\u201d<\/p>\n Bright spark \u2026 Cooke in House of the Dragon. Photograph: Theo Whiteman\/HBO<\/p>\n When she was eight, Cooke started going to the Oldham Theatre Workshop, a youth theatre group that also nurtured the likes of Anna Friel, Suranne Jones and Joseph Gilgun. At the time, it was at the end of her street. \u201cMy mum was just like, ballet\u2019s not worked out, let\u2019s chuck her in there.\u201d What went wrong with ballet? \u201cMy mum said I answered the teacher back too many times.\u201d (When casting The Girlfriend, Wright said she chose Cooke because she had \u201cmoxie\u201d.) Had she expressed any interest in performing before? \u201cI was the eldest daughter of two, and a child of divorce,\u201d she says, drily. \u201cSo there was a lot of \u2018Look at me, love me\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n She feels strongly that there should be more drama workshops available to young people, particularly from working-class areas. \u201cThere is a huge amount of talent to be found in these places, but you need to fund them, and it can\u2019t just be the Harrow and Eton lot, because you\u2019re only going to get one side of the story, and it\u2019s not going to be truthful.\u201d Without groups such as the Oldham Theatre Workshop, TV, film and theatre all starts to look the same. \u201cIt just becomes completely homogenised, and it\u2019s fucking boring.\u201d A pause, then she laughs: \u201cShe says, getting riled up.\u201d<\/p>\n But talking about it is important, she continues. \u201cI thought with a Labour government, these things would be prioritised, but it feels like it\u2019s not.\u201d There is less and less funding for the arts, and she is clear about what is being lost. \u201cEven if you don\u2019t want to be an actor, it\u2019s important to have a place to go and express yourself, and not be locked in your room on your phone. You\u2019re able to develop social skills. Children today are so isolated. And with the rise of the manosphere, the antidote to that is play, and showing boys that they can be tender and emotional, and that it\u2019s beautiful and cool and mind-expanding to be on stage.\u201d<\/p>\n Cooke has to head off to a meeting, about a top-secret script. She has three films coming out in the near future. There are two horrors: Visitation, in which she plays a nun, and Brides, which is more of a gothic romance. There is a film about the crime novelist Patricia Highsmith \u2013 originally called Switzerland, though it may now have a new name \u2013 which will be directed by Anton Corbijn. He made Cooke\u2019s favourite film, the Joy Division biopic Control, so she was happy to get the chance to grill him about that.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, House of the Dragon is due to end with a fourth and final season. As ever, in Westeros, it\u2019s impossible to say who will make it out alive. \u201cIn the book, I survive until the end of the story,\u201d she says, meaning that Alicent might well be in with a chance. \u201cSo good behaviour-willing, I won\u2019t get the chop.\u201d Her dad, then, has got even more catching up to do.<\/p>\n Season three of House of the Dragon starts on HBO Max, Sky Atlantic & Now on 22 June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"House of the Dragon is a massive television series. Over two seasons, the prequel to Game of Thrones…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":650419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-650418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=650418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/650419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}