House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones are known for gruesome deaths and oftentimes violent confrontations; there’s no ifs, ands or buts about that. However, in the case of HOTD, we rarely see Olivia Cooke’s character, Alicent Hightower, partake in said violence. But in a rare moment of rage during Season 1, she confronted her son, the eventual king, Aegon, and slapped him. Now, the actress has opened up about filming that moment, revealing what it was like to actually slap her TV-son and why it made her feel “awful.”
Throwing it back to the Game of Thrones spinoff, Cooke recalled this story to The i Paper during a discussion about her new project on the 2025 TV schedule, The Girlfriend, and her career so far. She explained that before she actually hit Glynn-Carney, it was made clear that he wanted her to really go for it. She said:
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