Milly Alcock and Emily Carey said it felt like they were 'about to kiss' after filming a scene in episode 4 of 'House of the Dragon'

• Milly Alcock and Emily Carey said they felt like they were going to kiss after filming a "House of the Dragon" scene.
• The episode 4 scene sees the characters reconnecting in friendship while sitting on a bench.

Milly Alcock and Emily Carey — who starred as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen and Queen Alicent Hightower in the first half of HBO's "House of the Dragon" — said it felt like they were "about to kiss" after filming a scene in episode four.

In the scene, the pair, who were once best friends, reconnect while sitting on a bench after a series of obstacles push them away from each other.

"I remember in rehearsal at the end of the scene, we were like, 'Did you feel like we were about to kiss?'" Carey told New York Times in a joint interview with Alcock.

"And I was like, 'Yeah!'" Alcock added.

"Yeah, dude, it felt like we were going to kiss," Carey continued. "That was really strange."

Starting with the pilot episode, Rhaenyra and Alicent's bond seemed like it could be more than just friendship. The posssibly romantic dynamic is something Alcock and Carey told Insider was was intentionally there as subtext.

"I'm just actually in love with Emily and so I think that's it," Alcock joked during a roundtable press interview with Insider, Popsugar, and Metacritic.

"It's something we brought up with Clare Kilner, one of the directors we also work with for the younger version of the characters," Carey added. "It was something I was immediately conscious of when I read the script as a queer woman myself."

Carey also told Insider that her initial reaction to the script read-through was that Rhaenyra and Alicent are "in love a little bit," and so the actors played around with the idea of young girls having a special emotional closeness to their best friends.

"I think any woman could think back to the best friend that they had at 14 years old, and it's a relationship and a closeness unlike any other," Carey said. "You do toe the line between platonic and romantic."

"Milly always says it's like a tactile closeness and emotional closeness," Carey said. "Especially when it's put in the context of this world where they are the only two young girls in the Red Keep. It's 100% something we were conscious of. And so if it reads on screen, it was purposeful."

In the more recent New York Times interview, Carey said it's up to the viewer to decide how they see the relationship.

"If you want to see it, you can. If you want to pretend it's not there, you can also do that," Carey said.

She added that their relationship is "just a closeness between two young women that cannot be verbalized, especially in the world they live in."

"I don't think they fully understand the feelings; it's just all-consuming love," she said.

Alcock and Carey have now finished their run acting on the show after episode five aired Sunday night. Next Sunday, a time jump in the plot replaces Alcock and Carey with actors Emma D'Arcy and Olivia Cooke, respectively.