Did anyone on House Of The Dragon actually watch Game Of Thrones?

“Who is your favorite Game Of Thrones character?” Olivia Cooke recently asked her House Of The Dragon co-star Emma D’Arcy in an HBO behind-the-scenes video. “I actually find that really hard to answer,” Emma replied. “Why?” Olivia asks, then joked, “Didn’t watch it. Hated it, actually!” “Never seen it. Fucking hated it,” Emma laughed in agreement.

Yes, the actors were joking around, but their quips aren’t actually that far from the truth. Neither of the pair—who play Alicent Hightower and Rhaenyra Targaryen, the rivalry at the heart of House Of The Dragon—were GOT fans before booking their roles.

“I hadn’t seen it before I auditioned, which I honestly think is the only reason I’m able to do the job. There’s no way I’d have made it through the audition process if, at that time, I had the love for the show that I have now. I think I’d have buckled under the pressure,” D’Arcy explained in a recent conversation with Interview Magazine. “I was aware of the show as a cultural phenomenon. I haven’t lived under a rock and it was very much in my peripheral awareness.”

As for Cooke, she told The Guardian earlier this month she hadn’t watched it because “I resist things that are popular, but to my own detriment, because it’s really fucking good.”

So the answer is yes, the actors have seen GOT, but only after they were shipped off to Westeros themselves. And as it happens, the actors portraying their younger selves hadn’t seen the landmark show before they were cast, either. Emily Carey told Newsweek that finally watching it during “the pre-production period” spooked her for Alicent’s eventual sex scenes. And speaking with The Times, Milly Alcock had a pretty good explanation as to why she’d avoided it until then: “I was very young when it came out. I think I was 11. So it was pretty inappropriate.”

But age is clearly not the only factor at play; in fact, it appears a good many of the HOTD actors never got into the original cultural phenomenon. Gavin Spokes (a.k.a. Lord Lyonel Strong) told The A.V. Club he had only ever seen the show “sporadically.” Meanwhile, Eve Best, who plays Rhaenys Targaryen, told Virgin Radio UK, “I was a total virgin for Game of Thrones, and I had not watched it at all. I hadn’t owned a TV for years, so I managed to not really come across it, although I knew it as a phenomenon, but I hadn’t seen it.” (She thought watching it after being cast might “freak [her] out,” but was eventually inspired to do so by her on-screen husband Steve Toussaint, who binged it during filming—suggesting he likely hadn’t seen it either!)

Targaryen patriarch portrayer Paddy Considine takes this trend a step further: he hasn’t really been watching his own show. Asked in a New York Times interview if he had seen Viserys’ consequential episode, “The Lord Of The Tides,” he replied, “No, I haven’t, and I’m not sure if I ever will. I haven’t seen anything beyond Episode 2, really. Some people don’t like to watch themselves, and I’m one of those people. It’s debilitating. I tend to just stay away. I’m sure somebody will show me a photograph.” Fair enough, Your Highness. These stars obviously don’t need to consume the content in order to deliver the goods.