'House of the Dragon' Star Admits She Was 'Scared' Over 30-Year Age Gap for Sex Scenes

This past weekend's episode of House of the Dragon, "King of the Narrow Sea," featured two sex scenes between actors with huge age differences. One of them left Emily Carey, who plays the teenage Lady Alicent Hightower, "scared." Alicent and King Viserys I Targaryen are almost three decades apart by age in the show, and Carey, 19, is 20 years younger than Paddy Considine, 49, in reality.

Carey was 17 when she was cast and 18 when cameras began to roll. When she heard there would be intimate scenes with Considine, she was worried at first, she told Newsweek. Thankfully, an intimacy coordinator was a great help in choreographing the scenes and making sure both actors were comfortable.

The intimacy coordinator was "amazing," Carey said. "Again, still being 17, the first scene that I read from the show was my sex scene and my intimacy scenes, that including the scene where I'm bathing the king-anything that felt intimate was considered an intimacy scene, which I thought was great."

Carey hadn't even met Considine when she first learned about filming the scene. She "didn't know how much of a joy he was and how easy" he made the scene. At the time, all she saw was that she shared an intimate moment with a 47-year-old.

"Having that outlet of the intimacy coordinator, to be able to talk everything through and not be shunned, or not feel awkward, or not feel like, 'Oh, this isn't your job. I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable but can I ask you...' it was never any of that, it was just that open dialogue," she told Newsweek. "In the rehearsal room, she was a massive help, and on set she was a massive help. Yeah, it was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be."

Carey also finally watched some episodes of Game of Thrones' first season before filming began and that only made her more nervous. "There's a lot of violent sex and it made me nervous. I was like, 'Oh God, what am I gonna have to do in this show?'" she said. However, showrunners Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik assured her and the other actors that they would take a different approach to sex scenes. It also helped that there are more women behind the scenes. Clare Kilner directed "King of the Narrow Sea" and Orange Is The New Black veteran Sara Hess is an executive producer and writer.

"It was an amazing thing, and it was empowering being on that set as a young girl and being treated the same as all of these very established men," Carey said. "It was great, I think they approached this in the best way they could have done."

The other big sex scene in "King of the Narrow Sea" involved Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen (Milly Alcock) and her uncle, Prince Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith). The scene didn't go so well for Daemon in the show, leading to Rhaenyra rushing back to the castle and sharing a night with Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel). Alcock is 17 years younger than Smith in real life, and her character is even younger in the show.

In a post-show interview with the New York Post, Alcock also credited intimacy coordinators with helping her get through this scene. "[Matt Smith and I] were just kind of mates. So, it was quite comfortable," Alcock said. "We had an intimacy coordinator, and we worked with her through the rehearsal process and blocked it out months before." House of the Dragon airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and is streaming on HBO Max.