The Game of Thrones franchise’s character casting has consistently been one of its greatest aspects. Even GOTverse creator George R. R. Martin is in awe of them. In addition to capturing the hearts of the audience, Emma D’Arcy, who plays Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen, the head of the Blacks, was the only member of the cast to receive a Golden Globe nomination for their work.

Emma D’Arcy felt she wasn’t a crowd puller

D’Arcy, in their latest interview with THR, recalled feeling like they weren’t good enough during their auditions, “I feel like, by the end of three months, I had taped every scene in the show. Because they took a punt on me, I guess, in that I couldn’t bring an audience. I just remember that it was good for a while and then it was awful. And then after a few hours, they said, “Great, you can go home and get drunk, we’ll be in touch.” Then Miguel came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders and said, “Can we do one more?”

Emma D’Arcy recalled her House of the Dragon auditions

D’Arcy recalled, “I wrote a pros and cons list during the auditions process. The big one on the cons list was loss of anonymity, but probably that was a way of writing self-hate or something. Then I auditioned [via self-tape] for three months during the pandemic after losing a year of work, so in some ways, I think my hands were tied. Halfway through the process, the then-showrunner, Miguel Sapochnik, called to ask me if I owned a wig. A proper person would’ve asked someone who does hair for advice.”

“I had a bag of hair in my color from another job, and me and my partner, we literally stuck it to my head, which took about two hours every time I self-taped. At the end of that, I did a four-hour in-person audition, and then I didn’t hear anything.”

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