The premiere’s was a shock to everyone in the audience, with a few key exceptions: those who read ’s source material, those who read the source material and those who encountered the spoilers ahead of time. Add one prominent name to that last category: Phia Saban, the actress who plays Queen Helaena. Blood and Cheese are the assassins Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) hired to murder Prince Aemond (Ewan Mitchell).
But the duo instead stumble upon Queen Helaena Targaryen (Saban) and her toddler twins Jaehaerys and Jaehaera. They demand Helaena tell them which is Jaehaerys, and kill the child in his bed. Appearing on this week, Saban opened up about how far in advance she knew about the ending of the season two premiere, saying, “If you give people a sniff that you’re in something like , and then they know that world at all and you say, ‘Oh, I’m playing Helaena,’ they’re like, ‘You know what happens to you, right?’ I was being told by people on the train that I was sitting next to!” The story of Blood and Cheese comes straight from Martin’s , with the book’s version of Prince Jahaerys’ murder even more gruesome than what’s seen in the show.
In the same way that every book-reading fan watched every Richard Madden scene anticipating the Red Wedding, so too have viewers looked on Saban, knowing the horrid fate awaiting Helaena and her family. “But nothing prepares you for opening [the script] up and being like, ‘okay, they’re doing that episode one,.
