On Olivia Cooke’s 21st birthday, she jumped to her death. At least that’s what it felt like. She was skydiving with her family, best friend, and then-boyfriend in Oahu, and one by one, they leapt from the plane, disappearing from view. Thousands of feet in the sky, the British actress was so anxious that she felt a gnawing pressure in her head and thought steam would blow out of her ears. But as she shuffled toward the open door, strapped to her guide, she gave in.
“I dipped my head out and I just remember this feeling of calm as I accepted my own death. And I felt myself smiling,” Cooke tells me on a recent Sunday morning at Locanda Verde in downtown Manhattan. “It was amazing, like jumping into a painting. But never again.”
Cooke, now 30, might not have plunged out of another aircraft, but free-falling into the Game of Thrones universe is probably not far off—not to mention equally exhilarating and terrifying. When she debuted as Alicent Hightower in HBO’s prequel House of the Dragon in 2022, the franchise already boasted George R. R. Martin’s storied book series, the world-dominating TV adaptation, and millions of devoted (often vocal) fans, many of whom were still burned by that hotly contested series finale three years prior. Plus, this show was different—following criticism that GoT was too male-centric and too white, House of the Dragon, though set 200 years earlier, would mostly center on two female characters and include more Black actors. There was some conservative backlash to that, but there was also “a bit of resistance” from the fans against making “another story out of the world” at all, Cooke says. Yet the series debuted with almost 10 million viewers, the biggest HBO premiere ever at the time; earned a Golden Globe and an Emmy nomination; and maintained its rabid fan base. Two years later, a second season is premiering tonight.
“I know what to expect now, whereas last time, that was mad,” says Cooke. “There was a pressure [in] doing a new offshoot of the Game of Thrones world, and really desperately wanting it to be well-received because we’d worked so hard on it.”
Based on Martin’s book Fire & Blood, House of the Dragon follows the drama in House Targaryen almost two centuries before Daenerys (the silver-haired queen played by Emilia Clarke) came on the scene. Cooke’s Alicent is the mother of the newly crowned young king Aegon, widow of King Viserys I, daughter of the Hand of the King, and ex-best friend of Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy), the rightful heir to the throne. While tensions between the women rise steadily throughout the first season, by the finale, peace seems impossible after Alicent’s oldest son usurps the throne from Rhaenyra and her other son kills one of Rhaenyra’s children. For the uninitiated, civil war appears imminent. The two sides? The Greens, loyal to Alicent’s son Aegon, and the Blacks, loyal to Rhaenyra.
I’m sitting with Cooke in a cozy corner booth of the Robert De Niro-owned restaurant in Tribeca, where she suggests sharing a slice of olive oil coffee cake. “Do you fancy that?” she asks, as if she is the hostess and I her hungry guest. She’s wearing a white button-down tucked into a pair of blue jeans with black flats, her deep auburn hair lightly curled at the ends. Her bold brown eyes pop even more in her no-makeup makeup. Not long after we’re seated, she gushes about watching Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club on Broadway the night before, which stars Eddie Redmayne and Gayle Rankin, the latter of whom appears in House of the Dragon this season. During intermission of the immersive play, Cooke was pulled up onstage to dance with other attendees and may or may not have sprained an ankle. “Run” to see it ASAP, she urges me in her thick Manchester accent.
Though this is our first sit-down conversation, there’s a striking warmth and openness to Cooke as she asks about my weekend plans and new apartment with genuine fascination. Her co-star and now close friend Emma D’Arcy agrees. “I just felt that extraordinary, unusual familiarity and safety, I suppose,” D’Arcy says later over the phone from London. “When I met her, I felt very at home with her immediately.”
Cooke, who grew up in Manchester, always liked acting and, as she puts it, “messing about and being an ass,” but didn’t think she would pursue it seriously. She imagined herself becoming a brain surgeon, a barrister, a high court judge; yet she was the kind of kid who’d put on shows on her front lawn. One was a play called The Bad Seed, which she made up with her neighborhood friend when she was 8 years old. “I think it was about a ghost child who died in the womb or something,” she says. American accents were involved, too. When she was 14, she went to an open audition and got an agent. At 18, she was booking commercials when she landed a small role in the BBC miniseries Blackout. Nine months in, she nabbed another role in Vancouver on A&E’s Bates Motel, a modern-day Psycho prequel starring Vera Farmiga and Freddie Highmore. “It sort of all happened before I could even be like, ‘Yes, this is what I want to do.’” So, rather than formally train at drama school, she learned on the job. “I think these past 12 years have been my film school,” she says.
Despite the whirlwind of the last few years, Cooke admits her life hasn’t changed much since the first season of HOTD. It’s not that she hadn’t been in buzzy projects before; she’s starred in the indie favorite Thoroughbreds opposite Anya Taylor-Joy, Steven Spielberg’s video game blockbuster Ready Player One, and the Oscar-nominated Sound of Metal. In the last one, her transformation into a bleach-browed heavy metal singer earned her widespread critical praise. But House of the Dragon was a different beast.
“I was aware of what happened to people who were on Game of Thrones and how they [became] so recognizable everywhere,” Cooke says. “I don’t know the ins and outs of how their lives had changed, but they were so visible. [I was] just really nervous that I would feel watched or followed....I was worried about having lots of eyes on me, but it’s actually been okay. It sort of ramps up when the show comes out, and things just die back down again.”
Though there was the notable exception of the Negroni Sbagliato meme. She and D’Arcy recently told Entertainment Weekly they hated the viral phenomenon. “It was just weird, man. It’s strange,” Cooke tells me between sips of her decaf espresso. She would hear her own voice in the background of other videos, and one time a stranger even quoted it to her in person. It was unlike anything she’d ever experienced before.
“At that point, I was a bit resistant to it all because it was all so new and the season had just come out, and I was a bit like, ‘Wow, what is going on?’ It all just felt a bit too much, but now I don’t care,” she says. “It’s silly and innocuous and bizarre that of all the things we said to each other on that fucking press tour, that’s the one that took off.”
When I ask if the incident made her more careful about what she says on-camera, Cooke responds, “For sure.” But sometimes it’s uncontrollable. “God, when you’re tired, you can’t help what you say, so something annoying will come out.”
Goofy moments like these—“seeking silliness,” as D’Arcy puts it—are arguably necessary to survive this pressure cooker of an industry and the scrutiny that comes with it. “If you take this stuff too seriously, then I think you can only be maybe a bit chewed up by it,” D’Arcy says, “but I think we both try to hold it in perspective in some way.”
Cooke admits her fear of heights has only become worse as she’s gotten older. Alicent, however, loves being on top of the world. (Her surname is Hightower, after all.) In fact, at the start of season 2, Alicent is at her peak. She’s the mother of the King of the Seven Kingdoms, and her father is the Hand of the King. She thrives on having the ear of powerful men, even if she can’t wear the crown herself. “When she was ruling in Viserys’ stead when he was ill, she fucking loved sitting at the head of the table and weaving this intricate political life for herself and being able to rule well.”
Alicent “doesn’t rule by hormones like the men do and is not impulsive,” Cooke says. (“It’s all just a big fucking dick-swinging competition,” she’ll later joke of the male characters.) But as the season progresses, her influence wanes. She must handle her sons “as the power goes to their head and they see her as irrelevant.” Not that Alicent, who became a mother in her teens, can connect with her kids at all. “She’s terrified of Aemond and what he’s become, and she can’t access Helaena,” Cooke says. As Alicent slowly becomes invisible, it’s also strangely liberating, “because all of a sudden eyes aren’t on her and she can sort of do whatever she wants.” Like Alicent, Cooke has also found herself being outnumbered by men on sets or projects throughout her career. But unlike the queen, she’s eager to share whatever power she has. “It’s incredibly male-dominated still,” she says of the industry, “and you can only try and advocate for yourself and others around you and set out, where you have the power to, to create more opportunities for people.”
When it came to sex scenes, Cooke worked closely with House of the Dragon’s intimacy coordinator, Vanessa Coffey. Given Game of Thrones’ reputation for nudity, Cooke had originally braced herself. “I thought there’d be way more, and so I’m relieved that when it has been used for me, it’s showing Alicent being pleasured, which is amazing and doesn’t feel gratuitous,” she says. “It feels like we’re telling a story.”
She recalls one bedroom scene she filmed that was cut. “It was messy as fuck. It wasn’t beautiful, and that was really fun to do.” It was “carnal” and even “animalistic,” she says. “I think Ryan [Condal, the showrunner] said we weren’t learning any more about the characters, which I disagree with slightly, but it’s okay. It’s his show,” she adds, with no hard feelings. Maybe we’ll see it in the bloopers, she says, laughing.
Meanwhile, the relationship at the core of the series, the one between Alicent and Rhaenyra, is severely broken. Despite having grown up together in the Red Keep, their lives have gone in opposite directions, and likewise, Cooke and D’Arcy mostly filmed in separate units for season 2, occasionally catching up with each other on the studio lot.
“They practiced proper adult relationships on each other,” Cooke says of the severed friendship. “When you break up with a friend, it’s so much more heartbreaking than breaking up with a lover a lot of the time, because they know every single part of you and it’s so much more vulnerable.”
Her real-life bond with D’Arcy, however, is solid. “It’s funny to talk about a friendship that is so fundamental in your life,” D’Arcy says of Cooke. “The thing I find strange is to realize that I suppose we haven’t known each other that long in broad terms, but she’s a pillar in my life. I would have found this a challenging experience if Liv was not on it.”
And of course, parts of the fandom ship Rhaenicent, a.k.a. Rhaenyra and Alicent as a couple. “Don’t they ship everyone together, though?” Cooke asks when I bring up the imagined romance. A fair point, but wouldn’t things be better if the old pals just made up and ruled the kingdom together? Cooke humors me. “Absolutely. Matriarchy now, please.”
During her ELLE photo shoot two days earlier, Cooke transforms in front of the camera. Upon her arrival in navy track pants and Asics sneakers, she bounces across the studio to shake hands with the crew and learn their names, but as she poses in leopard print and gold chains or a Schiaparelli suit, she smolders and pouts her lips, mouth slightly open. Even when her eyes are hidden under a baseball cap, it’s like her body is staring the camera down. Between lens snaps, she relaxes, swaying to a Kaytranada song thumping through the speakers. A smile peeks out from the shadow of her brim. This must be like what it’s like to watch her on set, I think as I watch her in the studio.
Cooke spent her early twenties in New York, living in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, from 2015 to 2020. (Right next to the McDonald’s, she points out.) Not long after she returned to London, she self-taped her House of the Dragon audition. “We saw probably more reads and actors for Rhaenyra’s and Alicent’s roles than I think anybody else in the cast…and the thing that always stuck with me with Olivia was that she was the one person who brought this real humanity to the character,” says series showrunner Ryan Condal. He calls Cooke “the kind of actor every showrunner, every writer, wants to write to.”
Still, filming season 2 was grueling, especially considering that Cooke, like many of her co-stars, had to be in all eight episodes rather than just five in season 1, due to a time jump. They shot for about eight months, mostly in Watford, England, an hour and a half commute from Cooke’s current home in London. The work was so “muscular” and “strenuous” that she needed to decompress at the end of the day. “I just have to not speak for a bit because it’s such a social job,” she says. “You’re being social from 6 A.M. to 7 P.M.” That quiet alone time often includes reality TV—her go-to is Made in Chelsea. “It’s [about] really rich kids who live in Chelsea who just shag each other.”
It’s a good thing she has a cast like this one to share the long hours and months away filming. “They’re like my family, and we adore each other,” she says. Tom Glynn-Carney, who plays Aegon, echoes this sentiment. “We put the wigs on and the costumes on, and all hell breaks loose,” he says.
They have high praise for Cooke, too. “I think Liv’s performance this year is one for the gods,” says Ewan Mitchell, who plays Alicent’s son Aemond. D’Arcy likes to say that Cooke’s “eyes speak in full sentences.”
“She’s a dear friend and a great giggler,” says Fabien Frankel, who plays Ser Criston Cole. In fact, Cooke’s great sense of humor is a recurring theme. Phia Saban, who shared many scenes with Cooke this season as Alicent’s daughter Helaena, remembers their antics while filming an otherwise somber procession scene. “We just got really hyper, and it became a little bit of a chamber of music actually,” she recalls. “Lots of singing.”
HBO officially renewed House of the Dragon for a third season just days ago. With a year off before filming, Cooke has plenty to keep her busy. First, it’s the Prime Video psychological thriller series The Girlfriend. Based on Michelle Frances’s 2017 book of the same name, it stars and is directed by Robin Wright (“She’s formidable,” Cooke says) as a woman whose life turns upside down when her beloved only son brings home a new girlfriend, Cherry (Cooke), home. It’s a different kind of character for Cooke, from her “bolshie” attitude to her full-glam aesthetic. “It’s nails. It’s stilettos. It’s lashes. It’s big hair,” Cooke says. Kind of like her look on set right now.
She’ll shoot that six-episode series when she returns to London, finishing in October. Then she’s off to Italy to film a romance “as a little palate cleanser,” she says, laughing. The film is Takes One to Know One, and co-stars Cooke and Jamie Bell as a pair who meet and fall in love on vacation, though they’re in relationships with other people. It’s directed by Nathalie Biancheri (Wolf, Nocturnal) and is billed as a “twist on the real-time getaway romance.” This marks Cooke’s first time producing a film with her production company, Chippy Tea, created in 2021.
“I think sometimes as an actor you’re afraid of overstepping the boundaries, but this is a moment where I feel like my voice is really heard and it’s important,” she says of producing. Plus, she feels “really empowered” doing it. Cooke sees herself shifting to the other side of the camera as her career progresses. She’d love to make something like Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria one day.
“I can’t imagine ever leaving this industry, but I do want to produce more. I write, so I’d like to get something that I write and direct,” Cooke pauses, before adding, “I don’t want to act forever, yeah.”
For now, she’s in full Dragon mode. When our interview winds down, Cooke gets ready to head to a Loewe fitting—the following evening she’ll stun in a deep-blue cutout gown at the HOTD season 2 premiere in New York—and an IV drip to alleviate the jet lag. Then she’ll appear on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, fly to Paris for more press, and ultimately head to London.
It’s all a bit dizzying, but Cooke is doing her best to stay grounded. She’s “not snobbish or picky” when it comes to her roles, or potential writing and directorial projects in the future. She’s already played with plenty of genres, she says, “and I’ve had the best time doing it all.”
Hair by Gonn Kinoshita for The Wall Group; makeup by Allie Smith at MA World Group; manicure by Honey at Exposure NY.
