House of the Dragon's Phia Saban on Season 2's First Big Moment of Horror

Have you recovered from watching the House of the Dragon season two premiere yet? Considering what happens successful the closing moments of “A Son for a Son”—probably not, actually, and we tin surely expect you-know-which country to person reverberations throughout the coming episodes.

At a caller House of the Dragon property day, io9 was portion of a radical of journalists speaking to Phia Saban, who plays Queen Heleana Targaryen, woman and sister to King Aegon II, and girl of Dowager Queen Alicent Hightower. Heleana has a large portion successful the premiere, which is wherefore we’re tossing retired 1 of these...

Though we don’t get their names successful the episode, Game of Thrones fans who’ve work George R.R. Martin’s House of the Dragon root material, Targareyn past tome Fire & Blood, cognize that the assassins who sneak into the Red Keep and execution Heleana’s son, Jaehaerys, are called Blood and Cheese. And they don’t conscionable execution the tyke, they brutally abstracted his tiny caput from his tiny body... aft forcing Heleana to constituent retired which among her identically blonde offspring is the heir to the Iron Throne.

Instead of screaming her caput disconnected successful the usually beauteous well-guarded castle, she grabs her different babe and runs into Alicent’s room—where her parent is bare successful furniture with the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, Ser Criston Cole. But she doesn’t respond to that. Nor does she crumble into hysterics astatine what’s conscionable happened. She’s conscionable eerily calm arsenic she announces “They killed the boy.”

For Saban, figuring retired precisely however Heleana—who’s already an offbeat, unpredictable person—would respond to the daze of seeing her lad murdered, past catching her parent with an off-limits lover, took immoderate time. “That was the astir breathtaking happening astir playing that country for me, due to the fact that immoderate aspects were scary,” she said. “I had to effort and find—something that was chill and affirmative was reminding myself: this is simply a circumstantial character, and [we are showing] however she would woody with this. And successful a way, that gave rather bully boundaries wrong which to spot what happened.”

Saban knew Heleana’s absorption was bound to startle the audience. “I deliberation radical are amazed by her evident deficiency of—for example, astatine the extremity of the occurrence erstwhile she comes successful connected Alicent and Criston and the mode she delivers the accusation that Jaehaerys is dead, radical person been like, ‘that was a spot unfeeling.’ But I deliberation that you can’t underestimate however you behave successful thing that is arsenic precocious stakes and arsenic traumatic arsenic that,” Saban said. “And I deliberation she’s idiosyncratic who is truthful peculiar and circumstantial anyhow that it would beryllium understandable that it would beryllium an intensified mentation of that erstwhile the crap truly hits the fan. I benignant of had amusive with [her reaction] being rather acold from [how I would really react]. Also, luckily for everyone, nary 1 volition person to spell done that. But you can’t imagine. You can’t ideate what it would beryllium like. I can’t imagine.”

House of the Dragon drops caller episodes Sundays connected HBO and Max.

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