House of the Dragon is without a doubt one of the best TV series of 2022, and a big part of that success is down to the House of the Dragon cast. But, Emma D’Arcy, who plays Rhaenyra Targaryen in the fantasy series, very nearly wasn’t a part of the cast at all.
The spin-off show goes back in time, long before Game of Thrones characters like Tyrion and Jon Snow were around, to tell the story of the Targaryen family tree. House of the Dragon is a thrilling drama series full of betrayal, death, and huge dragons like Vhagar and Vermithor.
Thankfully, the show also features Emma D’Arcy, but in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the actor revealed they almost missed out during the audition process.
“It was about three months of self-taping in my living room in the middle of the pandemic, so it was amazing. Actually, it felt like living on an island and trying to make cinema or something, because I didn’t see anyone or really do anything, but supposedly I was in conversation with one of the biggest TV shows in the world,” D’Arcy explained.
“My partner and I cobbled together a wig out of literally a bag of hair and then after three months of doing that, I was invited for a four or five hour in-person audition, did that, and then after that, I was told, ‘You’ll hear something next week.'”
“And then I didn’t. Then I was told it was probably not going my way. And I thought, ‘Wow, it’s a real shame.’ I went to the countryside, just for the weekend, to start metabolising, and at the end of that weekend I had about 14 missed calls from my agent,” D’Arcy continued. “I spoke to him the next morning to hear, ‘They changed their mind! Do you want to do it?’ So weird, honestly. A very solitary process that went on seemingly half a year.”
It all worked out for the best in the end, clearly, and the casting agents made the right call. We cannot wait to see what D’Arcy and the rest of the House of the Dragon characters get up to when the House of the Dragon season 2 release date comes around.
Until then, we’ve got all kinds of House of the Dragon questions answered, like who is Otto Hightower, and will the Starks be in House of the Dragon?