Actress Emily Carey, who essays the character of Alicent Hightower in the HBO series House of the Dragon, a prequel to Game of Thrones, recently opened up to a publication about being “scared” of filming sex scenes in the series with a 48-year-old co-star.
In episode 4 of the series, Carey’s character consummates her relationship with her husband King Viserys (Paddy Considine). Carey was 17 when she read the script and 18 at the time of filming; Considine is 48 years old.
Sharing her feelings, Carey admitted, “It scared me because, at that point, I still hadn’t met Paddy, I didn’t know how much of a joy he was and how easy he was going to make (shooting the scene), and all I saw was, you know, a 47-year-old man and me. I was a bit concerned.”
“Again, still being 17, the first scene that I read from the show was my sex scene and my intimacy scenes, that includes the scene where I am bathing the king—anything that felt intimate was considered an intimacy scene, which I thought was great,” she said.
Though she worried about shooting the sex scenes, Emily was comforted by the presence of an intimacy coordinator. “Having that outlet, to be able to talk everything through and not be shunned, or not feel awkward. In the rehearsal room, she was a massive help. And on set, she was a massive help. It was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be,” she added.
“When we got to the rehearsal room, regardless of who was in which scenes, there was an open dialogue about, ‘Look, this is how we’re approaching the show. This is how it’s going to be different from the original. This is what we want to talk about. This is what we want to put out. This is how we want the viewers to view the women in our show,’” the actor further said.
“It was an amazing thing, and it was empowering being on that set as a young girl and being treated the same as all of these very established men. It was great, I think they approached this in the best way they could have done,” she signed off.
