By now, everyone who does (or doesn’t!) watch HBO‘s House of the Dragon knows that Prince Jacaerys Velaryon, aka Jace (Harry Collett), died at the end of the Season 3 premiere. However, there was still one major person who didn’t know Jace’s fate until House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 2: his mother, Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy).
**Spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 2, now streaming on HBO Max**
Early on in House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 2, Baela Targaryen (Bethany Antonia) returns to Dragonstone with Jace’s corpse. She somberly leads a procession of dragonpit servants carrying Jace through the castle until they arrive outside Rhaenyra’s chambers. When Rhaenyra arrives she asks Baela about the battle, who cooly replies, “‘Tis won.”
However, when Rhaenyra clamps eyes on the dead body of her firstborn son, she seemingly disassociates. She shifts into mom mode, asking him, “Jace, what have you done?” The rest of her court watches on as she begins to interrogate Jace’s corpse as if he’s a little boy who has only gotten into a little bit of trouble. Her grief begins to crescendo as she intellectually grapples with the horrific reality of what’s in front of her.
“Yeah, it’s hard. If I’m honest, that was the only scene in the series that I sort of dreaded,” Emma D’Arcy told DECIDER. “I think part of that is becoming necessarily very, very close with the people that we filmed the show with, and every time you film a character’s death scene, you also sort of lose an actor from the company.”
D’Arcy also was keenly aware of the layers that could be found in the line, “What have you done?”
“It’s interesting hearing you say that line, ‘What have you done?’” they said. “I was cognizant of wanting to actually ask the question as opposed to it becoming kind of rhetorical. I just wanted it to sort of live and for her to hope for an answer because I think that that denial is the most honest.”
“I think that I think that that denial communicates how kind of intolerable the sort of dawning reality is.”
Helping her in the scene was co-star Harry Collett, who did stand in as a corpse for the entire day of shooting. Collett told DECIDER there were discussions about using a dummy, but he wanted to be there.
“It was hard, and Emma [D’Arcy] did an amazing performance. All of the reactions you see in [the] room are all very real,” Collett said. “I think there’s a scene where there’s a clip where Bethany [Antonia] actually has a tear rolling down her face, and that’s real. That’s just a real reaction to Emma’s performance.”
D’Arcy returned the compliment. “Harry Collett was totally beautiful on the day, and it’s a funny thing to have to do,” they said. “He gave me a very wide berth in the morning, and we hadn’t really spoken and we hadn’t talked. We hadn’t planned how to sort of approach it, but he caught me briefly at lunch and sort of said, you know, ‘I didn’t know, like the best way, but I just thought I’d give you sort of some space or whatever.’”
“I’m always just deeply touched by the sort of beautiful intuition and grace that actors have and the respect that we give each other,” D’Arcy continued. “He’s an ace person. He’s a really special person. I was very relieved when that day was over, actually.”
Collett was ironically relieved for a different reason. He almost fell asleep.
“Obviously I couldn’t do anything, could I? Because I was just dead,” Collett said. “I mean, we got to the end of the day where they were doing like wide shots and I was trying not to fall asleep because I had my eyes closed the whole day.”
“I was like, if I snore, I can’t snore being a corpse, can I?” he said. “While Emma’s doing this incredible performance, I can’t just go and snore.”
Luckily, he stayed awake, albeit dead.
House of the Dragon will return next Sunday, July 5 at 9 PM ET on HBO and HBO Max.