House of the Dragon actor Emily Carey has spoken about the homophobic hate she received from fans who accused her of pushing her lesbianism onto her character . Speaking to The Independent , Carey, who played the young Alicent Hightower in the Game of Thrones prequel, revealed she was the victim of trolling and “borderline homophobic hate” from fans who claimed she weaved her sexuality into Alicent’s narrative . Aged 17, Carey portrayed Alicent as she navigates friendship, palace politics, and later pregnancy.
In interviews around season one’s launch, Carey and her on-screen best friend Milly Alcock , who played a young Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, spoke about the “romantic subtext” between their characters, with Carey saying that in rehearsals it felt like they were “going to kiss”. Carey said the backlash to her comments was “a lot to take on”, and that the claims she had forced her sexuality upon her character was “absurd”. “As a queer person, I received a huge amount of borderline homophobic hate on the internet,” Carey said.
“I had a lot of comments that I’d forced my lesbianism on these characters, which is just absurd, in my opinion. All we said was that if you wanted to see this potential spark between them, you could.” “I mean, it wasn’t something we were ever consciously playing.
It wasn’t something where we thought, ‘Hey, let’s throw this in. This will be fun.’ It was just something that we spoke about, as we felt this .
