Inside the ‘House of the Dragon’ [SPOILER] Scene: ‘It Was a Bloodbath’
variety.comJordan Moreau SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not watched the series premiere of “House of the Dragon,” titled “The Heirs of the Dragon.”“Game of Thrones” is back, and it’s as violent and stomach-churning as ever — as evidenced in the bloody C-section performed on Queen Aemma Arryn (Sian Brooke) in the series premiere of HBO’s “House of the Dragon.” Aemma, already the mother of Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen (Milly Alcock), dies in childbirth while hoping she’d give birth to a male heir for King Viserys Targaryen (Paddy Considine).
She appears only in a few scenes, and the last we see of her (for now, anyway), she’s laid to rest on a funeral pyre alongside her newborn son’s lifeless body.“Probably as every actor, you just think, ‘Oh come on, can I not be in it a little bit more?'” Brooke tells Variety about her role.
To play the pregnant queen, Brooke had to wear two different prosthetic bellies, one for her bathing scene and the other for the gruesome birthing scene.“They fit above the waist at the top of the ribcage, then went down,” she says. “They were incredibly lifelike, so much so I found myself walking and waddling around.
My body must’ve thought, ‘Hellooo? Where are we now? We’re not going back there again, are we?’ They were quite weighty, but being pregnant you do feel quite weighted.”And it wouldn’t be a “Game of Thrones” show without buckets of blood.
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