Entertainment- Warning: Spoilers ahead for season one, episode one of HBO's "House of the Dragon."
- The "House of the Dragon" premiere shows a traumatic scene between King Viserys and Queen Aemma.
Sunday night's premiere of "House of the Dragon" — the first "Game of Thrones" prequel series — had a disturbingly violent climax cut between scenes of tournament fights with Queen Aemma's death by crude C-section.
"Those were hard days filming," actor Paddy Considine (who plays King Viserys) said during a roundtable interview with Insider along with Popsugar and Metacritic. "It was tough to shoot. It's all make believe, but it was tough."
In the scene, a maester explains to Viserys that Aemma will be unable to give birth naturally and will surely die. But there's a chance her baby could live, only if they cut it out of her womb. Viserys makes the choice for Aemma, not even consulting her before she is held down by servants and cut open as she screams in terror.
"It was very emotional," Considine said. "In fact, it was a lot more brutal and a lot more emotional than it ends up in the final episode. And I wasn't sure about that when I first saw it."
He continued: "Maybe it was too much because Viserys is utterly devastated, and maybe that was too much to show early on. I think they really cut it down really well."
"House of the Dragon" coshowrunner and director Miguel Sapochnik also separately told Insider that they had shown the edit of the scene to "as many women as possible" to ask if it was too violent. He said the unanimous answer was no.
The scene ends with Queen Aemma dead, the bed beneath her soaked in blood that the audience saw spurting out of her abdomen. The baby, named Baelon by Viserys (after the king's own father), is successfully "delivered" — but the baby dies just hours later.
Considine had a lot of praise for Sian Brooke, the actress who played Queen Aemma for her very short stint on "House of the Dragon."
"We went for it, and there's a lot of tears," Considine said. "But props to Sian because she was going through the physicality of everything. It was a very physical bit of work from her."
According to Considine, Brooke was only on set for a few days but made an enormous impact with Queen Aemma's pivotal death and the shadow that it casts over King Viserys and Princess Rhaenyra. "That hangs over this show for a very, very long time," he said.
"House of the Dragon" season one will continue next Sunday at 9 p.m. ET.
For more on the new series, read our breakdown of the best 14 details you might have missed in the premiere.