House of the Dragon star Olivia Cooke reveals why women should rule the world
House of the Dragons star Olivia Cooke has opened up a can of worms on a controversial topic, ahead of the season two release.
Olivia Cooke is fixing Phia Saban with the sort of pointed stare every daughter knows all too well – mum is not happy.
Cooke, 30, and Saban, 25, play mother and daughter queens Alicent Hightower and Helaena Targaryen in the Games of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon.
Saban has just revealed she and Cooke are real-life neighbours back in London and she even has a key to her on-screen mum’s house.
Cooke has adopted a motherly tone as she probes about her spare key.
“Have you lost it?” she asks Saban mid-interview during a HOTD press tour of New York.
“No!” Saban insists earnestly.
Cooke lowers her voice and questions Saban as if she’s not sitting in front of a panel of journalists from around the world.
“Have you got it?” she asks again.
“Yes!” Saban laughs.
Saban turns back to her interviewers.
“Because I want to go into the bath when she’s not there … I don’t have a bath!”
She turns back to Olivia.
“Come talk to me – you can sit on the loo.”
The easy familiarity between the pair is a lucky thing because in the explosive second season of the show, the relationship between Alicent and Helaena is front and centre.
If you thought the series debut where Sian Brooke’s Queen Aemma dies after the king orders she be cut open in a forced C-section was horrifying – just you wait.
In episode one of season two, which will drop in Australia on Binge on Monday, the cast dials it up even further.
So after wrapping filming on another season filled with gore, incest and, of course, dragons, Saban and Cooke needed some reprieve.
They joined several of their cast mates on holiday to Costa Rica and Iceland, with the latter a surprise organised for Cooke’s 30th birthday.
Saban is known to scurry between their neighbouring London homes “in my flip flops” in search of not only a bathtub, but also an understanding ear.
Although there’s only five years of age between the duo, the gulf between their professional experience is far bigger.
Cooke has been a familiar face for more than a decade, cutting her teeth on the BBC until, aged just 19, she landed the role of Emma Decody in the series Bates Motel which serves as a prequel to the cult Alfred Hitchcock flick Psycho.
She is also well known for her starring role in Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One.
Meanwhile Saban had a small role in Netflix’s The Last Kingdom, but HOTD has catapulted her into a whole new level of fame and fandom.
“I think I am quite mummy to you,” Cooke says fondly.
The younger actor’s devotion to her co-star is evident.
“I don’t want to be soppy …” Saban begins.
“Please,” Cooke smiles.
“Olivia has been like … when all of this has been scary and I sometimes feel very new to all of this … Olivia has been the most grounding person for all of it,” Saban confesses.
Cooke nods in understanding.
“Well there’s just so much noise around this, especially as it’s one of your first jobs,” Cooke says.
“This is one hell of a job to, sort of, come into and I think I’m more jaded by the last 12 years of my life.”
On-screen, Alicent and Helaena’s bond grows closer as the men around them destroy the long-held peace in the realm.
It’s no wonder the dowager queen favours her only daughter.
She once caught her eldest son King Aegon II pleasuring himself out an open window and he later had to be literally dragged kicking and screaming to the throne.
Tom Glynn-Carney’s fantastic wild-eyed portrayal of an older Aegon, who is now married to his sister Helaena in a typical Targaryen pairing, still carries much of that lunatic-like intensity to the despair of his mother.
Meanwhile her other son, the one-eyed Prince Aemond, contributed to igniting the civil war after his dragon Vhagar killed Rhaneyra’s son Prince Lucerys at the end of season one.
While chomping his nephew in two was technically an accident, Aemond has transformed from a bullied little boy to a bona fide villain since Ewan Mitchell took stewardship of the role.
The resulting war forces both the Houses of Westeros and viewers to decide whether they are on Alicent’s Team Green, a nod to Hightower’s green sigil, or Team Black headed by Emma D’Arcy’s Queen Rhaneyra.
Viewers will remember from season one that King Viserys, whose last haunting gasps were nailed by actor Paddy Considine, always maintained Rhaenyra was his heir despite producing two sons with Alicent – Aegon and Aemond.
However on his deathbed, the rambling king told Alicent, who the feverish king thinks is Rhaenyra, about the Song of Ice and Fire prophecy made by Aegon the Conqueror.
The prophecy foretells that the Prince That was Promised must sit the throne to save the realm.
Confusing his words to mean he is naming Alicent’s son who is also named Aegon as heir, Alicent stakes a claim.
“They (Alicent and Helaena) are trying to have agency. I think they’re trying to have autonomy in this sort of medieval fantasy world but it’s so hard,” Cooke says.
“They’re coming up against all these men that are so hormonal and just going off of it and trying to create a legacy and have their names in the history books.
“(They) aren’t thinking big picture, aren’t thinking what’s best for the realm.”
Cooke waves her hands as if to gesture to the mess that is international politics in 2024.
“It would just be so much better if the women got to rule,” Cooke says matter of factly.
“I mean we see it now, f---ing hell.”
Once again, Cooke can’t help but recognise the echoes between her real world and the one where she plays pretend.
What other parallels will be drawn between our respective realities where war and whispers reign supreme?
House of the Dragon, Season Two, streams from Monday on Binge, available through Hubbl.
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Originally published as House of the Dragon star Olivia Cooke reveals why women should rule the world
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