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House of the Dragon’s Phia Saban on Playing Helaena’s Worst-Case Scenario
“She’s still very much in the beginning of processing her own grief, and suddenly she’s just an object for the people’s grief to be projected onto.”
The episode ends with a hired thug and a ratcatcher brutally murdering one of Helaena’s young children right in front of her, a horrific incident actually toned down from how upsetting it is in George R. R. Martin’s books. As the latest victim of a war that seems destined to only claim more lives, Helaena’s response to the trauma puts her in the center for once, if only briefly: In episode two, she’s forced to grieve at her son’s public funeral in an attempt to win the Greens political points over the baby-killing Blacks. I was paired with Ewan Mitchell and Tom Glynn-Carney and Olivia Cooke for a few press interviews recently, and it was so interesting hearing those actors express their feelings about their characters’ place in the family dynamic.
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