House of the Dragon star Eve Best beautifully paid tribute to her on-screen family during Monday’s season 2 premiere in New York City, arriving in a jaw-dropping black dress that showed off her sides and featured intricate serpentine-inspired beadwork all along the back.
Speaking with ET on the red carpet at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City, the 52-year-old actress who plays Princess Rhaenys Targaryen explained the inspiration behind the look.
“I feel like it could be a snake or a dragon,” she teased, referencing both the show’s title and her character’s husband, Lord Corlys Velaryon — also known as “The Sea Snake” — played by Steve Toussaint.
House of the Dragon returns to HBO for its long awaited second season on June 16. Following Rhaenys’ bombshell “f**k you” moment during King Aegon II’s coronation in season 1, fans of George R.R. Martin’s book on which the Game of Thrones prequel is based, Fire and Blood, are expecting significant bloodshed as the war between the Black Council and the Green Council gets underway.
“Oh, I can’t tell you anything,” Best teased of her character’s journey. “She does get on her dragon a fair bit. There’s quite a lot of dragon riding that I was not at all prepared for physically or emotionally.”
The 52-year-old actress stressed the physicality of her performance, saying, “It’s sore. It’s really painful on your sides.”
Best explained how her epic action sequences come to life, saying that her “favorite part is the craziness” of the experience.
“Just being on this sort of mad moving object, being blown with smoke and wind and the chaos of it,” she shared. “It’s times when I felt like, ‘Oh, gosh. I’m just really, really old and I want a cup of tea. I can’t do this.”
The actress said that after shooting her scenes against a blue screen, seeing the show’s finished product is “very surreal.”
“You’re pretty impressed,” she admitted.
Asked to describe the upcoming eight-episode season in three words, she said, “Bigger. Badder. Dragon-ier.”
Elsewhere on Monday’s red carpet, showrunner Ryan Condal told ET just how massive this next chapter in the saga is going to be.
“‘Paradise lost,’ I think, is the best way to describe what’s unfolding here in House of the Dragon,” Condal teased. ‘We’re adapting Fire and Blood. We’re being true to the story that’s written in the book.”
House of the Dragon is a prequel series to HBO’s megahit, Game of Thrones, and is adapted from the novel Fire and Blood, by author George R.R. Martin, which tells the history of House Targaryen, the family dynasty that ruled the seven kingdoms of Westeros hundreds of years before the events of Game of Thrones.
According to Condal, some changes are required because of the nature of the source material itself, but their plan is to stay true to the story.
“There are different demands in the show given that it’s an adaptation of a history book,” Condal said. “But the plan is to faithfully render George’s history as it’s been given in the text.”
This season is also set to feature some of the biggest and boldest action sequences in the franchise’s history.
“They’re two of the biggest things we’ve ever filmed,” Condal teased. “They involve lots of dragons and fire and action, and it’s exciting! I’m excited for everyone to see it.”
In promo materials for the upcoming season, viewers are encouraged to pledge their allegiance to the Greens — supporting Aegon’s claim to the Iron Throne — or the Blacks — supporting Princess Rhaenyra. See the full-length trailer for season 2 below.
House of the Dragon season 1 is now streaming on Max. Catch up on everything we know about season 2 at the links below.
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