Olivia Cooke has thoughts on playing a grandmother in “House of the Dragon” at only 30 years old.
In the HBO series, the actor plays Alicent Hightower, who shares three children — Aegon, Aemond and Helaena — with King Viserys Targaryen (played by Paddy Considine).
Recently speaking to The Times of London, Cooke admitted that she has mixed emotions over the fact that the actors who play her children — Tom Glynn-Carney, 29, Ewan Mitchell, 27, and Phia Saban, 25 — are all around her age in real life.
“I have really complicated feelings towards it,” Cooke said in the article, published Friday. “If they can create dragons, they could have made me look younger — and then older. Or maybe they should have cast actors in their forties?”
She added, “It’s strange. I bristle a bit because the years between being a teenager and now a grandma on screen were so short for me.”
“There’s real reticence to see women age on screen,” the actor noted.
Despite sharing a bizarre proximity in age with the co-stars who play her children, Cooke said she is “grateful for the role,” and called her grandmother character “hysterical to play.”
“Because Tom is a year younger and I’m, like, ‘Son, come here! Come on to the bosom!’ It is a strange dynamic that I’m very aware of.”
“House of the Dragon,” a prequel series to HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” airs Sundays on the streamer Max.