So much has happened through eight episodes of House of the Dragon that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to remember how congenial Rhaenyra and Alicent were before the whole “marrying your dad” thing permanently altered their friendship. Milly Alcock and Emily Carey, who played the younger versions of the characters, have discussed the “closeness between [the] two young women” that resides somewhere between platonic love and romantic lust, but is it still there while they’re adults?
Emma D’Arcy (adult Rhaenyra) and Olivia Cooke (adult Alicent) were asked this question in a recent interview with the New York Times. “I don’t know if Alicent knows what it feels like to feel those things now,” Cooke answered. “There’s layers and layers of repression; sexuality and lust are probably a prehistoric, sedimentary layer by now. From Alicent’s point of view, I don’t think she’s that self-aware, in terms of what she’s feeling, to know what’s propelling her to reach out to Rhaenyra again.”
D’Arcy added that there’s an “erotic energy” to their early interactions, but with everything that’s happened since, “the hurt and pain is so dominant that I don’t know if there’s a space, at this point, for a conscious interaction with sexual lust, but she definitely yearns for the old physical intimacy that they shared. It’s different from what she shares with her current husband and her children. A different form of contact.”
Rhaenyra pines for a more innocent time, when she could have sex with her uncle in a brothel (how could she resist that haircut?). You can read the rest of D’Arcy and Cooke’s interview here.
(Via the New York Times)