The hard-core fans of the House Of The Dragon trilogy, according to actor Emily Carey, forced her off social media when she made some remarks ahead of the film’s anticipated debut.
This week saw the premiere of the spin-off series that serves as a prequel to the Game of Thrones series, and 19-year-old Emily, who portrays a younger Alicent Hightower, provided an insight into what it’s like to be inside the belly of the beast while chatting on the promo trail.
Sometimes not that much fun, it seems.
You see, after experiencing a ton of abuse during an appearance at Comic Con, Emily temporarily erased her Twitter account prior to the premiere.
When the actress suggested in July that she had given the antagonist Alicent a backstory in an effort to humanize her before playing her, the suggestion was met with harsh criticism. It turns out that people did not approve of this and criticized Emily for ostensibly deviating from George R. R. Martin’s book.
And despite having many supporters, it was the hate that won out.
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I adore social media, she declared. I’ve been using social media since I was a child since I’ve been working since I was a child, so I’m 19 and quite aware of everything. Any hate that is spoken simply comes from a person hiding behind a screen. Simply said, you must move past it.
However, I will admit that I removed Twitter after Comic-Con because it is simply too noisy. There are so many people and it’s so noisy, even when it’s fantastic.
I enjoy the buzz, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes it can be overpowering, she said to News.com.au , saying in full transparency.
Along with Milly Alcock’s Rhaenyra Targaryen, who plays her former childhood friend and adversary, Emily plays Alicent Hightower, one of the main characters.
The spin-off is based on George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels and is set 200 years before the events of the main series. Despite being set 200 years apart, the two share one thing: a conflict over the royal line of succession. Naturally.
When discussing Alicent’s backstory at Comic-Con earlier this year, Emily revealed that she had kept a journal in order to fill in the blanks. She told the audience: There were some gaps that we had to fill, so to figure it all out, I sort of started journaling. With the assistance of the “showrunners,” Ryan and Miguel, I managed to come up with some form of backstory, and it proved to be very useful.
I’ve never before had the flexibility to construct a complete human being. So being able to talk in such detail with her was a lot of joy.
I believe it helped me gain a better knowledge of Alicent, she continued. She seems to have so many facets. She has a lot of different facets. Although I believe many viewers already anticipate her to be the show’s antagonist, I believe that by casting her when she was younger, there was much more to be explored.
This was not well received by the audience, who thought Emily needed to understand that she was portraying a villain. Many questioned whether she had even read the book.
I stand by what I stated in the panel, Emily had written in a since-deleted tweet in response to the criticism. People, Alicent is not the bad guy. She is a youngster and a patriarchal product when we first meet her. Simply wait and watch. Maybe you’ll understand.
New episodes of House Of The Dragon are published each Monday at 2 AM on Sky Atlantic and NOW.
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