House of the Dragon actor Emily Carey has admitted she felt “scared” to film sex scenes with her co-star Paddy Considine, who is 30 years older than her. Carey plays Alicent Hightower, the young queen to Considine’s king, Viserys Targaryen, in the Game of Thrones prequel.
The actor, who was 17 years old when she was given the scripts, was initially worried about recording intimate footage with an actor born three decades before her. “It scared me, because at that point I still hadn’t met Paddy, I didn’t know how much of a joy he was and how easy he was going to make [the scene],” she told Newsweek. “All I saw was, you know, a 47-year-old man and me. I was a bit concerned.”
The scenes come during the fourth episode of House of the Dragon, showing her character bathing Considine, before a joyless sex scene she appears to feel obliged to take part in. In the same episode, 39-year-old Matt Smith’s character of Daemon Targaryen takes part in an incest scene with his niece Rhaenyra, played by 22-year-old actor Milly Alcock – an age gap of 17 years.
“[Smith and I] were just kind of mates. So, it was quite comfortable. We had an intimacy coordinator, and we worked with her through the rehearsal process and blocked it out months before,” Alcock told the New York Post of their interaction, which is set in a brothel. “We felt pretty overdressed, because everyone else was nude.”
The issue of intimacy coordinators on George RR Martin-related TV series has recently generated headlines. Sean Bean, who played Ned Stark on Game of Thrones, told the Times that he thought they “spoil the spontaneity”, claiming that “the natural way lovers behave would be ruined” if you had “somebody saying: ‘Do this, put your hands there, while you touch his thing.’”
However, Carey has said that House of the Dragon’s use of intimacy coordinators made her feel calmer about her scenes with Considine. “Having that outlet of the intimacy coordinator, to be able to talk everything through and not be shunned, or not feel awkward … Yeah, it was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be.”
Given the franchise’s track record of ill-treating its female characters, this is a particularly relevant issue. “In the pre-production period I sat down to try and watch [Game of Thrones] and of course the first season, even just the first episode of Thrones, there’s a lot of violence upon women,” said Carey. “There’s a lot of violent sex and it made me nervous. I was like: ‘Oh God, what am I gonna have to do in this show?’”
