House of the Dragon’s Ewan Mitchell Is Channeling Tony Soprano and Robert De Niro

Team Black is finally taking flight. By the end of House of the Dragon season 2, episode 6, “Small Folks,” Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) has joined the fray, hopping on her dragon, Syrax, in search of the mysterious dragon rider who tamed Seasmoke. On Team Green, things fall further into disarray as Prince Regent Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) grabs even more power, kicking his mother, Queen Alicent (Olivia Cooke), off the high council.

On a new episode of Still Watching, Mitchell chats about finding the darkness within Aemond—and how evil he thinks the one-eyed prince really is. “On a scale of 1 to 10? He’s up there,” Mitchell admits. “I would say he’s probably a nine to the eyes of a lot of people. But in his eye, he’s a one. He doesn’t think anything he does is bad. It’s all justified.”

Vanity Fair: Can you talk to us a little bit about how Aemond justifies his actions?

Ewan Mitchell: Aemond never really felt unconditional love growing up. He was the spare son, although he felt like he should have been treated as the first. It’s the duty of the spare son to fight the war and to do the necessary evil, so to speak. He was neglected a lot as a child. He was bullied relentlessly by his nephews, his brother acting as ringleader. So Aemond very much wanted to find his place in the world. The thing is, if a child isn’t embraced by the village, they’ll burn it down to feel its warmth. And so Aemond, with this newfound power that he has with Vhagar, he will now seek validation and, ultimately, attention through other means—through war.

Do you feel that Aemond made a wise decision kicking Alicent off the council?

Yeah, it was tactical. I’ve always kind of played with different motivations for him, one of them being that he wants his mom. He feels like he has to become the war hero and finish this war up, so then he finally has time to spend with his mum. Every time that I played a scene with Olivia Cooke, I always visualized Aemond and Alicent sitting on a Dornish beach, just sipping on piña coladas. Far from war. He can finally have that time with his mum that he’s always craved, that he never really had.

He kind of had to harden himself into this weapon and manufacture himself into something lethal so he’s never seen as weak again. It’s a little bit like Michael Mann’s Heat. There’s a quote in it that Robert De Niro says: “Never get attached to someone you’re not prepared to walk out on in 30 seconds flat when you feel the heat around the corner.” That’s the code that his character lives by.

Aemond has a similar kind of code that helps him. That’s why he’s so easily able to walk out on the madam: Love is weakness in his world. Alicent challenges that code—she is, in fact, his kryptonite. With the people that you love most and the ones you want the most, you often have to push them out of the way to get what you want. It’s similar to the kid in the playground who bullies his crush. He just doesn’t want his mum at work. He wants to do the job at hand, and his mum can’t get in his way.

Are there any other inspirations that you drew on in crafting the character?

A multitude of things. I took inspiration from Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia, and a lot of other characters who possess an enormous power and recognize that they can do things no one else can do. They see it as a call to do great things, to write their names in the history books.

I took inspiration from ’80s horror icons. I took inspiration from Tony Soprano. There’s a coin that you see in episode two, that Aemond picks up and finds in his room. Everything that coin means and represents, it’s something that Aemond carries with him later on through the series. What James Galdolfini used to do for The Sopranos, he used to put a little stone in his shoe in the scenes where he wanted to feel the tension and feel the building volcano underneath the surface. I thought there was something interesting in putting this coin in my shoe as well. That assassination attempt on Aemond’s life, it lives rent-free in Aemond’s head. It’s always on the back of his mind that Daemon (Matt Smith) came this close to ending Aemond’s life. Instead, someone else lost their life in the process. There is a bit of guilt there from Aemond, but he will never show it.

Aegon’s scene with Aemond was straight out of Misery. Can you talk about the brothers’ dynamic?

Although [Aemond] is the spare, he’s always felt like Aegon was inferior to him. When Aemond was training in the Red Keep yard under Ser Criston Cole [Fabien Frankel], Aegon was probably in some sleazy corner in Flea Bottom squandering his inheritance. Aemond always felt like [Aegon] lacked the perseverance to be king. He always felt like he was a better fit than Aegon.

I love this relationship because these two brothers, they’re so different in a lot of ways. Aegon himself says in episode 9 of season 1 that he has no wish to rule. He’ll get on a boat and sail far away from the Iron Throne. You could see how that might be lucrative to members of the small council, because that’s someone who you could have a certain control over and be able to manipulate—and, in doing so, the course of the war.

Aemond, on the other hand, is a character who you could argue has a political agenda, who has such a strong ambition. You can see how that might be a little more difficult to control. I think that scene in Aegon’s bedchamber where he’s leering over him, it’s like Aemond is kind of telling him in that moment: I’m taking over now. What you saw, you didn’t see at all. Just let me do my job.

I can’t remember if it was the director who gave me the direction. But I very much wanted to put across this idea that Aegon was this fly caught in a spider’s web, and you’ve got this leering Aemond, who is the spider.