Alicent hits harder as fans turn on Olivia Cooke

Olivia Cooke says the backlash for House of the Dragon’s Alicent has moved far beyond online sniping—she’s faced insults in person. At the same time, she’s pushing a broader point about class and access, arguing that drama workshops and arts funding shape who

When Olivia Cooke sits down for an interview in London on a stormy summer afternoon. her phone buzzes before the conversation even really starts. Her dad texted her the day before—simple, domestic, and strangely timely. He’d sent a photo: the first season of House of the Dragon queued up on his television.

“He said: ‘Raining outside. so starting a binge-watch.’” Cooke laughs. then adds what that message really means in their family dynamic: her dad doesn’t just watch the show—he’s taking it in as someone with no plan to soften the verdict. “Yes, I like it. Quite violent.” He was already thinking about the next episode, too, after picking up Cooke’s nephew from school.

The thing is. Cooke has spent years making audiences sit with violence. betrayal. and consequences in a very particular corner of Westeros. Now. as season three approaches. she’s found herself at the center of a different kind of conflict—one that comes with the territory when you play a divisive character as effectively as she does.

Cooke, 32, grew up in Oldham and moved to Vancouver at 18 to join the cast of Bates Motel. After a few busy but unhappy years in New York. she returned to London just before the pandemic. filming the film Pixie in Belfast and realising she didn’t have to “beat down [her] sense of humour any more”. Her credits include Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One. Sound of Metal with Riz Ahmed. ITV’s Vanity Fair adaptation in which she was Becky Sharp. and a brief appearance as the MI5 agent Sid in Slow Horses. But House of the Dragon—where she plays the scheming and morally murky Alicent Hightower—has been the turning point.

The series is based on George R. R. Martin’s Fire & Blood. Alicent is Rhaenyra Targaryen’s childhood best friend, but betrays her by marrying King Viserys to become queen. She gives birth to ethically dubious blond heirs to the Iron Throne in season one. Viserys’s death leads to war: Alicent fights Rhaenyra for the crown in season two. By the finale. Alicent waves the white flag and makes a deal to give up her son to Rhaenyra to support her claim to be the true queen.

That makes season three feel less like a fresh start and more like piling more weight onto an already buckling story. “In short,” Cooke says, “you could say that as season three approaches, Alicent has a lot on her plate.”

One reviewer called her “the saddest woman in Westeros,” but Cooke doesn’t fully buy the label. “I don’t think she really has time to reflect on how she is feeling inside,” she says.

The most striking part of Cooke’s account isn’t the character’s complexity—it’s how quickly audiences have turned into camps around that complexity. She says Alicent has been divisive among fans. particularly in the earlier days when the character worked against Rhaenyra’s claim to the throne. But Cooke has also seen a shift in who people relate to. “Cooke has noticed that recently Alicent has been a focal point for some queer women and non-binary people,” she says.

“Alicent is a product of the patriarchy,” Cooke continues. She points to season one, when Alicent’s marriage to the king was engineered by her father. More recent episodes. she says. show “an unravelling of everything that she’s learned. and she’s becoming liberated. in a sense.” She’s careful with the specifics of identification. “I don’t want to say that she is living the queer experience, because she’s definitely not,” she says. “But I don’t know if there’s something that is relatable there.”.

Not everyone finds the same door open.

“It can be quite vitriolic at times,” Cooke says, describing the hostility that comes with playing Alicent. She doesn’t frame it as a complaint about her own luck—she says she’s “very grateful for the job”—but she doesn’t soften what it feels like when it stops being theoretical.

“To field insults when you’re just walking down the street. ” she says. trailing off. then returning to what that looks like in practice. She mentions people wanting a picture first, and then unloading their anger after the cameras are out of the way. “Yeah!. They want a picture with you. then afterwards. they’ll say. ‘I fucking hate your character. by the way. ’ or. ‘Your character’s a cunt.’”.

Cooke responds with the kind of practical humour that keeps the moment from swallowing her. “I sort of laugh and say: ‘Well, you can delete that picture,’” she shrugs. “I don’t know what you can do. I just try and take it in my stride.”

She assumed, at first, that the worst of it would stay online. “I assumed that it would be mostly digital, but it’s in the real world, too?” she asks—then answers herself. “Yeah!”

The pressure is part of why she stepped away from social media entirely. Cooke got rid of her own Instagram six months ago. “I was sick of seeing 21-year-old looksmaxxers being like: ‘If you follow a program. this is what you can do. ’ and it’s a side-by-side picture of him at 14. going through puberty. and him now. saying: ‘Look at the transformation.’”.

Her algorithm, she says, latched onto a “morbid fascination with physical extremes.” “It’s a lot,” she tells me. “It’s very navel-gazy, and it distorts your mental image of your body and your self. And I think that’s trickled into our industry, as well.”

She deleted the account and “hasn’t looked back,” not because she believes she can’t handle it, but because the content did not stop at entertainment—it slipped into how people were taught to see themselves.

That same divide—between who gets celebrated and who gets punished—runs through the rest of her recent work. and it’s where the conversation starts to feel less like celebrity chat and more like something structural. Cooke stars in The Girlfriend, a “very fun, very pulpy thriller” that came out at the end of last summer. In it. she plays Cherry Laine. an ambitious estate agent who goes head to head with her boyfriend Daniel’s mother. Laura. played by Robin Wright. who also directed the series.

Cooke says the show’s success caught her off guard. “I didn’t expect it to capture people’s attention like that.” She credits the source of that attention not to spectacle alone. but to the relationship dynamics: “Girlfriend and mother-in-law relationships. that’s quite potent. There’s a lot of nuance and passive aggression to dig into and exacerbate and exaggerate.”.

Just like Alicent, her characters come with side-taking. “As with Alicent. audiences were divided about whether they supported Cherry or Laura.” Her mum was on Cherry’s side because—Cooke says with a straight face that reads like a joke she’s heard before—“you can’t differentiate between me and any character I play.” Her dad. she adds. reacted differently once he saw “some of its more explicit scenes. ” describing it as “being a bit like a radio play for him”.

And the audience reactions landed predictably where class frustrations live. Cooke says “boy mums” were on Laura’s side. “A lot of boy mums were on Laura’s side,” she repeats.

The Girlfriend, beneath the melodrama, is also about snobbery and the British class system. Daniel comes from a rich family. Cherry comes from a poor one. Cooke says trying to break into his world was never going to feel natural. “To try to get into those networks, it’s like trying to cut through steel with a twig,” she says. “It’s impossible to penetrate, and Cherry had to learn the hard way.”.

She brings it back to real life, too. “But it’s the same now. It’s really hard to navigate the upper echelons of society. I mean, not that I would want to,” she laughs. “But it’s a whole culture to itself.”

That’s where Cooke’s own history enters the room with sharper edges. She has spoken before about the challenges of being an actor from a working-class background with a northern accent, and about how the entertainment industry is built on networks and connections in upper echelons.

Her mum jokes about it now. “She’s like, you’re not working class any more,” Cooke laughs. “I think my sensibility is still working class. I just have become, against all odds, very successful in my field.”

When she was eight. Cooke started going to the Oldham Theatre Workshop. a youth theatre group that also nurtured Anna Friel. Suranne Jones and Joseph Gilgun. At the time. it was “at the end of her street.” She recalls her mum’s explanation for why ballet didn’t last. “My mum was just like, ballet’s not worked out, let’s chuck her in there.”.

“What went wrong with ballet?” she’s asked, and Cooke’s answer is simple: “My mum said I answered the teacher back too many times.”

When casting The Girlfriend, Wright said she chose Cooke because she had “moxie”.

Cooke’s childhood, she says, wasn’t a smooth runway into the arts. “I was the eldest daughter of two, and a child of divorce,” she says. “So there was a lot of ‘Look at me, love me’.”

She feels strongly that more drama workshops should exist for young people, particularly from working-class areas. “There is a huge amount of talent to be found in these places. ” she says. “but you need to fund them. and it can’t just be the Harrow and Eton lot. because you’re only going to get one side of the story. and it’s not going to be truthful.”.

Without groups like Oldham Theatre Workshop, she says, TV, film, and theatre start to feel the same. “It just becomes completely homogenised, and it’s fucking boring.” Then she laughs, bristling: “She says, getting riled up.”

Her concern is also political. “But talking about it is important,” Cooke continues. “I thought with a Labour government. these things would be prioritised. but it feels like it’s not.” She points to “less and less funding for the arts” and says that matters even if you never plan to act. “Even if you don’t want to be an actor. it’s important to have a place to go and express yourself. ” she says. “And not be locked in your room on your phone.”.

She ties workshops to social development and to the emotional education she believes youth need. “You’re able to develop social skills. Children today are so isolated. And with the rise of the manosphere, the antidote to that is play,” she says. She adds that theatre offers a counter-example: “showing boys that they can be tender and emotional. and that it’s beautiful and cool and mind-expanding to be on stage.”.

By the end of our time together, Cooke has to go. She’s headed to a meeting with “a top-secret script.” She has three films coming out in the near future. There are two horrors: Visitation. in which she plays a nun. and Brides. described as “more of a gothic romance.” There’s also a film about crime novelist Patricia Highsmith—initially called Switzerland—though it “may now have a new name”—directed by Anton Corbijn. Cooke says she was happy to grill him because he made her favourite film, the Joy Division biopic Control.

And still, House of the Dragon is the thread pulling everything back. The series is due to end with a fourth and final season. Cooke says Alicent’s fate may not be sealed. “In the book, I survive until the end of the story,” she says. “So good behaviour-willing, I won’t get the chop.”

Season three of House of the Dragon starts on HBO Max, Sky Atlantic & Now on 22 June.

Her dad, meanwhile, has a schedule of his own—one binge-watch at a time. But Cooke’s story is clear: the show may be built from power games and betrayals in Westeros. yet the impact can follow you back into the real world. where a stranger can ask for a photo and still tell you they hate what you represent.

Olivia Cooke House of the Dragon Alicent Hightower Emma D’Arcy Rhaenyra Targaryen George R R Martin Fire & Blood The Girlfriend Robin Wright Oldham Theatre Workshop The Girlfriend thriller British class system arts funding northern accent HBO Max Sky Atlantic & Now 22 June