- Warning: Spoilers for "House of the Dragon" season one, episode four, "King of the Narrow Sea."
- Criston Cole actor Fabien Frankel said he spent "over seven months" preparing for his sex scene.
"House of the Dragon" star Fabien Frankel revealed that his sex scene in episode four took "over seven months" of preparation.
In the episode, Princess Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock) starts to explore her sexuality and persuades Ser Criston Cole (Frankel), her personal knight who had been standing outside her door, to take her virginity.
During an interview on Entertainment Weekly's podcast "West of Westeros," Frankel said he, Alcock, director Clare Kilner, and the show's intimacy coordinator, Miriam Lucia, discussed the scene for several months before it was shot.
"It was one of the first things I was very keen to talk about," Frankel said. "The big thing for me was about it not feeling like another gratuitous, sweat-glistening-off-their-back sex scene, 'cause it's just not like that. Anyone who's ever had sex will tell you sex ain't that beautiful. It isn't some picturesque, amazing thing. It's awkward, especially when you are young."
The scene was a significant moment for Cole because, as a member of the Kingsguard, he had sworn an oath of chastity.
Frankel said that he wanted to show Cole's "struggle" in betraying his vows and taking his armor off during the scene.
"I remember just saying to them, 'There's no way this armor comes off without the help.' Knights would have squires, and squires would take off their armor," Frankel recalled. "There's no way Rhaenyra and Cole are gonna take that armor off in 10 seconds. So I was like, 'Well, you have to have that in.'"
The actor added: "How do we get the buckle off? How do we get the boots off? These are all the things I really cared about, 'cause they take away this archaic sexual sex scenes that have existed for so long in television and film, and make it feel real and how it would be."
Frankel also felt the scene need to be "different" from the typical "Game of Thrones" sex scenes within the same episode.
In the preceding scenes, the audience saw snapshots of King Viserys (Paddy Considine) having sex with his 18-year-old wife Alicent (Emily Carey), while Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) had an intimate moment with his young niece Rhaenyra inside a brothel.
In an interview with the New York Post, Alcock, who is 22, admitted that she felt "quite comfortable" feeling the incest scene with her 39-year-old costar but thought the brothel scene was "shocking."
However, Carey, who was 17 when she was first cast in the show, told Newsweek that she felt "scared" about her sex scenes with Considine, who was 47 at the time.
"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 [the scene], and all I saw was, you know, a 47-year-old man and me, I was a bit concerned," Carey said.
Carey added that having an intimacy coordinator helped her feel comfortable on set.
New episodes of "House of the Dragon" air Sundays on HBO at 9 p.m. ET.