House of the Dragonstar Emma D’Arcy recently revealed the long and arduous audition process going into their much-loved role in the popularGame of Thronesprequel.
D’Arcy, who portraysHouse of the Dragon’s main protagonist Rhaenyra Targaryen’s older incarnation (Milly Alcock plays the younger) has been praised for the emotional vulnerability they bring to the role, including some difficult and violentscenes inHouse of the Dragonseason one. D’Arcy’s performance also earned the actor a 2023 Golden Globe Best Actress Award nomination and much social-media-fueled fan adoration.
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During a recentHollywood Reporterroundtable discussion, fans learned thosedifficultHouse of the Dragonsceneswere also partly why D’Arcy landed the role in the first place. D’Arcy details a several months-long pandemic-era audition process, during which they mostly self-taped from home. This process required multiple hairstyle changes after producer Miguel Sapochnik suggested they wanted to see a wig. “I had a bag of hair in my color from another job, and me and my partner, we literally stuck it to my head, which took about two hours every time I self-taped," D’Arcy said.
This was before a four-hour-long in-personHouse of the Dragonauditionwith its own challenges. “At the end of that, I did a four-hour in-person audition, and then I didn’t hear anything, I feel like, by the end of three months, I had taped every scene in the show. Because they took a punt on me, I guess, in that I couldn’t bring an audience,” D’Arcy said. “I just remember that it was good for a while and then it was awful. And then after a few hours, they said, ‘Great, you can go home and get drunk, we’ll be in touch.’ Then Miguel came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders and said, ‘Can we do one more?'”
D’Arcy said that deciding to do the audition in the first place resulted from a long list of pros and cons beforehand. One of those was the sure loss of anonymity casting in such a high-profile show would likely entail down the line, including actors who get a lot of attention for beingGame of Thronesvillains like Faye Marsay, who played Arya Stark’s nemesis, The Waif, and Jack Gleeson, who portrayed the much-reviled Prince Joffrey.
After the audition process was said and done, D’Arcy won the role after what they describe as “the virtuosic performance of my life.” Fans would likely agree D’Arcy was the correct choice for the role, and their accolades support this claim.
House of the Dragonseason 1 is available on Max.
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