House of the Dragon’s most memorable scenes are often flashy, fiery (literally), and full of agonizing violence. Last week’s episodes had plenty of those, but last night’s fifth episode, “Regent,” gave us one of the most powerful reactions we’ve ever seen from the show, and also one of the quietest. In a new interview, “Regent” director Claire Kilner talked about how this all came together.
We’ve seen brilliant choices made with incredible restraint in House of the Dragon before. Another big example from Season 2 was in the premiere, when Helena witnessed the brutal beheading of her infant son and emotionlessly ran through the Red Keep to deliver the news. But that’s not how Alicent reacted in “The Regent,” when the Small Council chose her son Aemond to rule in place of the seriously injured King Aegon.
This is a double whammy, because not only are they pushing aside the much more experienced Alicent because she happens to be a woman, but they’re also appointing a cruel leader who she knows is cruel, and who she also correctly suspects is Aemond’s fault that Aegon came back from the battle in such bad shape.
In this scene, instead of focusing on the smugness of the newly promoted Aemond as he begins issuing orders, Kilner moves the camera closer to Alicent’s face, and as the sounds in the room around her quieten, we see her physical reactions to what’s just happened — rapid breathing, rapid heartbeat — and Olivia Cooke’s carefully modulated facial expressions show a woman with a mixture of emotions: anger, contempt, humiliation and panic. She’s terrified of what this might mean for the future.
Speaking to The Wrap, Kilner explained why he stuck with Cooke’s captivating performance in that shot: “For every scene, I do so much prep beforehand – breaking it down and looking at the characters – but I also get on set with my cinematographer and discuss how we would shoot it if we only had one long shot,” he said. “I thought, ‘This is all Alicent. We could shoot this whole scene with Alicent.’ And also because Olivia Cooke carries it all so quietly. There’s so much going on behind those eyes.”
Kilner explained that she and her team knew it was the right choice: “Sometimes you don’t know if the studio or people are going to forgive you for it. We were all on board with it. But it just became so obvious that there was this huge betrayal going on,” she said.
New episodes of “House of the Dragon” stream Sundays on HBO and Max.
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