‘House of the Dragon’ Director on Aemond’s Nude Scene and ‘Mommy Issues,’ That [SPOILER] Cameo and All the Criston Cole Hate: ‘We All Have a Bit of Criston in Us’

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains major spoilers for Episode 3 of HBO‘s “House of the Dragon” Season 2.

With another “House of the Dragon” episode comes another burial.

Shortly after the funeral for young Prince Jaehaerys, the Cargyll twins were laid to rest after their brother-vs.-brother duel last week. For the first time this season on “House of the Dragon,” no major characters died — except for a bunch of soldiers from House Blackwood and House Bracken in the Battle of the Burning Mill.

Though it happened offscreen, the first official battle of the Dance of Dragons has been waged, and it left hundreds of bodies littered in the fields. Not far from there, Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) arrived at the ancient, leaking castle of Harrenhal and claimed it for himself without any bloodshed. Ser Simon Strong (Simon Russell Beale), immediately bent the knee to Daemon and offered him a humble supper in return (and kept accidentally addressing him as a prince instead of king).

Long considered a cursed castle for all the death its hallowed halls have seen, Harrenhal isn’t exactly a five-star hotel for Daemon (or even a two-star Airbnb). He begins having disturbing visions, including one of young Rhaenyra Targaryen (Milly Alcock reprising her Season 1 role) sewing Jaehaerys’ head back on. The vision marks the first time Alcock has returned to the series after playing Rhaenyra for the first half of Season 1.

King Aegon II Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney) officially makes Larys Strong (Matthew Needham) his master of whispers. Larys convinces the king that he shouldn’t join the war effort just yet, as his new hand Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) sets out with Gwayne Hightower (Freddie Fox), the brother of Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke), and their troops. Tensions are high between the two knights, as Criston just ousted Gwayne’s dad Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) as hand to the king. They narrowly survive a run-in with Daemon’s daughter Baela Targaryen (Bethany Antonia), who was scouting ahead on her dragon. On Dragonstone, the black council advises Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) to assemble an army, and she sends her youngest children, Joffrey, Viserys II and Aegon III, across the sea with Rhaena Targaryen (Phoebe Campbell) for safety.

Back in King’s Landing, Aegon goes out on a drunken night of debauchery with his Kingsguard buddies and runs into his brother Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell), who’s cuddling naked with a prostitute.

“He needs a bit of love. He’s a broken boy, needs someone to fix him. Season 1, it was a rich show full of morally compromised gray characters. I wanted to present a character who, in those three episodes, that time in his life was just complete darkness,” Mitchell told Variety. “Someone asked me the other day whether or not I thought Aemond had mommy issues, and I don’t know if he had mommy issues or rather he just want it to be loved by his mom a little bit more. Growing up, he never really felt that unconditional love. He had to find surrogates elsewhere. He sort of found it in his dragon, Vhagar, this older she-dragon, and he’s also found it with the madam. But whether or not it’s enough, if it’s a worthy enough surrogate, is questionable.”

The episode ends not with another fight scene, but with a surprise showdown of words, as Rhaenyra sneaks into King’s Landing to talk to Alicent and try to avert the war. Disguised as a septa, Rhaenyra ambushes Alicent while she’s praying at church. The two silently argue about the rightful heir to King Viserys and his misinterpreted prophecy of the “prince that was promised” in the Song of Ice and Fire. Director Geeta Patel, who also helmed the Season 2 finale, talks with Variety about the tense conversation, Aemond’s nude scene and all the hate Criston Cole has been getting online.

The secret meeting between Rhaenyra and Alicent doesn’t appear in the original “Fire & Blood” book, and it’s the first time we’re seeing them meet since last season. How did you create this brand new scene?

It was very purposeful that you have this moment where your protagonists actually confront each other. It was important to the writers to have Rhaenyra and Alicent bring it home and be the spine of the season, because that’s the spine of the first season: these two women’s relationship. In order to expand the world, we wanted to be able to come back to them. What the writers did so well, and the actors, is by the end of Episode 3 they bring Episodes 1 and 2 into it. It’s almost like a litmus test that if 1, 2 and 3 are working, you’re gonna feel it. If they’re not working, you won’t feel it because it’s a lot of words.

A lot of the feeling in that scene comes from Episode 8 of last season, which I was also lucky enough to direct, because that’s where Viserys proves to Rhaenyra that he loves her, and he puts her first because he gets out of bed when he’s dying and walks across that throne room. That moment, if it’s visceral enough, carries into Season 2. When Rhaenyra goes to see Alicent to be like, “Hey, we have to stop this war,” I feel that she’s actually there selfishly for her own emotional reasons. “Did my father love me? Because I thought he loved me, and then he changed his mind with you.” I’m not sure she’s aware that’s what’s driving her. That scene is filled with all the dramaturgy of everything before it.

The previous two episodes ended with Blood & Cheese and the Cargyll twins fight, but this conversation between Rhaenyra and Alicent was almost just as tense. When you were shooting it, how did you build up to this momentous moment, where they’re almost dueling with their words?

When we shot that scene, we gave it all the time that we could. I knew that when you’re shooting something so massive and they’re running around everyday doing different scenes from different episodes, it takes time for our actors to start really walking in that episode. We kept talking about Episode 8, we kept going back and revisiting those scenes and bringing them to life. When you see someone you haven’t seen in years and there’s a conflict that you had with them, or there’s something that they remind you of, it becomes fresh right away. Like, I was bullied when I was 14, and if somebody treats me badly now at age 48, it all just hits as if I were 14 again. That was really important to bring to that scene. Everything’s coming back.

Between takes, we would go back to Episode 8 and the first half of the first season and their childhood and fill our memories with it, so that when they’re talking to each other, it’s actually not about today: It’s about yesterday. It was such a beautiful, deep scene that it was like a fine wine. The more they did it, the deeper they went in.

Milly Alcock also returns to the series for the first time in this episode. What was it like working with her and shooting Daemon’s creepy vision?

I had never worked with Milly in the first season, so that was interesting. When she and Matt came in, the first thing we talked about was their intimacy and how much they trusted each other with each other’s feelings. The next part of it was getting inside of Daemon’s head, because, up until this point, he has been responsible for killing someone but hasn’t processed it. The reason for this scene was for Daemon to actually confront himself and see himself in the mirror.

The whole season is a level of therapy for Daemon. He’s been running so fast, he’s never really stopped to feel things. When she turns and looks at him, I wanted to make sure that without words he would be confronted because she’s seeing him and knows him. What Matt did so beautifully is he allowed himself to feel in that moment. I remember being in tears when we were shooting that, because the way that Matt portrayed Daemon’s pain as she looked at him, I felt the remorse and regret — which we don’t see in Daemon very often.

Nudity and sex scenes have been a part of “Game of Thrones” since the beginning, but it’s rare we see a main character completely nude, much less a male character. How did you shoot that very vulnerable scene, and what was it trying to convey?

Ewan is such a great actor. He understands what he needs to do in order to portray Aemond. When I spoke with him originally about the nudity, I said to him, “Let’s just go through the story. If you don’t feel comfortable being nude, then you’re not going to be nude.” We were both on the same page in that way. We started walking through, and he walked me through his character. One thing about directing that’s really important is to surrender to the actors, and the actors surrender. It’s a mutual surrendering. In this case, Ewan knew his character so well that I was listening to him and walking with him as we went through every episode before this.

What we came to is that Aemond was hurt. He was bullied when he was little. Since he was hurt, he had created this persona that was the exact opposite of how he was feeling. He created a persona of someone who doesn’t give a fuck. That shift, from someone who’s vulnerable to literally watching him put on his armor, was what we were going for in that scene. It’s one of the few times you see the young child in him and you see the pain in him. Slowly he starts putting on his armor and when he stands up, the fact that he doesn’t care that you see his penis is such a strong visceral shift. And so, of course, Ewan was like, “I want to be fully nude in that moment. It’s important to me because that’s who my character is. That’s what he would do.” And that’s what we did.

And now moving on to Criston Cole, who everyone has said is going to be the most hated character this season. This episode is his first as the hand to the king. How did you want to portray this new status level for him, and do you think he’s really the most hated person in Westeros?

I hated him in the first season. I felt everything that we were supposed to feel. The challenge as a director for Episode 3 and Episode 8 was to actually humanize him. The opening scene is him having a moment of anxiety, of being lost and then being called to action. It’s his first day of being the king’s hand, and I’m hoping that moment is very relatable. We’ve all felt it where you feel impostor syndrome, and that you don’t really belong here.

With Criston Cole, I really wanted to insert point of view. Watching him and having a moment of anxiety and walking with him downstairs, passing the men with a continuous shot going into the council chamber, that was intentionally designed so that we would feel him for once. We would be in his space, rather than everyone else watching him. A lot of times the lack of liking someone comes from not being in their point of view. When we’re in that space, we see everything happening at that table. That was one technique to start bringing his dimension out and start building to what’s going to happen in the season finale, where I think you are going to really understand him.

He’s a very interesting character by the time you get to the season finale. There’s a lot of things that we will relate to and we will be embarrassed to relate to. What he shares with us in Episode 8 is pretty awesome — we all have a bit of Criston Cole in us. That’s what we’re building. There’s this vulnerability in Episode 3, and then it keeps building from there and by the time you get to Episode 8, he has this beautiful moment where he shares what he thinks about the world and what he thinks about war.

This interview has been edited and condensed.