Inside Aemond Targaryen's Shocking Nude Scene on 'House of the Dragon'

Prince Aemond Targaryen got fully naked during House of the Dragon this week (the brothel scene...did not hold back!), and it was a moment that was extremely mulled over by both actor Ewan Mitchell and director Geeta Vasant Patel.

During a convo with Vulture, Mitchell explained, "Scenes like this start with a conversation about how far you’re prepared to go. It wasn’t a choice we made lightly. But it’s true to Aemond that he shocks the audience. Weakness is not part of Aemond’s vocabulary."

He then went on to add, "Aegon catches Aemond in a vulnerable spot. Picking up the script for the first time and seeing those brothel scenes in episode two and three, I saw a brilliant opportunity to offer a rare glimpse of his vulnerability. You only ever see him in his Targaryen blacks, so to see him in that world—not only that, but then humiliated by his brother—is quite shocking."

Patel also discussed Aemond's nude scene with Variety, saying "Ewan is such a great actor. He understands what he needs to do in order to portray Aemond. When I spoke with him originally about the nudity, I said to him, 'Let’s just go through the story. If you don’t feel comfortable being nude, then you’re not going to be nude.' We were both on the same page in that way. We started walking through, and he walked me through his character. One thing about directing that’s really important is to surrender to the actors, and the actors surrender. It’s a mutual surrendering. In this case, Ewan knew his character so well that I was listening to him and walking with him as we went through every episode before this."

The director then went on to explain, "What we came to is that Aemond was hurt. He was bullied when he was little. Since he was hurt, he had created this persona that was the exact opposite of how he was feeling. He created the persona of a someone who is callous and has no regard for what others think of him. That shift, from someone who’s vulnerable to literally watching him put on his armor, was what we were going for in that scene."

She added, "It’s one of the few times you see the young child in him and you see the pain in him. Slowly he starts putting on his armor and when he stands up, the fact that he doesn’t care that you see his penis is such a strong visceral shift. And so, of course, Ewan was like, 'I want to be fully nude in that moment. It’s important to me because that’s who my character is. That’s what he would do.' And that’s what we did."

Noted!

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