Olivia Cooke Opens Up About the Body Shaming Fueling ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 3 Backlash
Olivia Cooke has never pretended that playing Alicent Hightower on ‘House of the Dragon’ comes without a cost, but the actress is now navigating a different kind of scrutiny as the show’s third season unfolds. What began as pointed criticism of her character has, according to multiple reports, spilled into deeply personal attacks on Cooke herself, with fans compiling examples of hate directed at the cast that include comments about her appearance.
A Reddit user gathered a series of hateful posts targeting Cooke’s Alicent alongside other cast members, noting it took less than three minutes to compile the examples, with the thread specifically calling out remarks aimed at castmates over their bodies. The timing has turned what should have been a straightforward promotional cycle into something far more complicated for the actress and the show around her.
House of the Dragon Season 3 Backlash
HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’ prequel returned on June 22nd, positioning this run as one of the most anticipated yet after the previous season was criticized for pulling back from a promised large scale battle. The premiere immediately reignited conversation when Aemond kissed his mother on the lips, a moment Cooke has since described in blunt terms.
Cooke told Entertainment Tonight the scene was devastating, dangerous, and humiliating, and confirmed there are more moments like it ahead, saying the show has found many ways to humiliate Alicent and, by extension, Cooke herself. She pointed specifically to a barefoot sequence as another uncomfortable beat, adding that viewers should tune in for what comes next.
The context differs from the season one premiere, when Viserys sacrificed his wife Aemma in a brutal forced birth scene that was widely criticized for its graphic violence, but Alicent’s season three ordeal reflects a similar pattern of women’s bodies being controlled by men in power within Westeros. Casting has added another layer to the controversy, since Cooke is only one year older than Tom Glynn-Carney, who plays her onscreen son, a detail that resurfaced as a fresh point of debate among fans this season.
Olivia Cooke Body Image Struggles
Separate from the show’s plot, Cooke has been candid about mental health challenges that predate the current controversy. She has shared that she once suffered a breakdown marked by up to three panic attacks a day, reflecting on how those struggles and the pressures of on screen work have shaped her sense of self.
Cooke has also described facing added pressure amid what she calls the Ozempic wave in Hollywood, as celebrities publicized dramatic weight loss on social media, and said stepping away from social media while filming ‘Brides’ in Budapest offered relief from being inundated with what she called endlessly shrinking bodies. She framed the constant emphasis on thinness as another way culture pressures women to feel anxious about existing in a larger body.
In an interview with Bustle, Cooke said she has put on a noticeable amount of weight this year for the first time and had not previously had to think about her body in that way, describing the current climate around beauty standards and appetite suppressing injections as a lesson in self persecution and self monitoring. She added that she laments the shift with friends, having believed the industry was on an upward curve toward embracing bodies of every shape.
Alicent Hightower Fan Criticism
The pile on has not gone unnoticed by longtime viewers of the series, many of whom argue the line between critiquing a fictional queen and attacking the woman who plays her has been crossed. The Reddit thread that compiled examples of the abuse argued that actors do not owe audiences anything, since they are compensated for their work rather than for absorbing hostility from strangers, and singled out the treatment of Cooke and Glynn-Carney as particularly baffling.
In a separate interview with TheWrap, Cooke described Alicent as a bit like Marmite among fans, meaning people either love her or cannot stand her, and said she generally tries to stay off social media to avoid getting pulled into the noise. That instinct to keep a distance from online commentary is not new for the actress.
Back in 2022, Cooke told Harper’s Bazaar that the visibility she gained after the show aired felt different from anything she had experienced before, and that having to block her ears and eyes from noisy ‘Game of Thrones’ fans had been a genuine challenge. She said she eventually came to accept the attention as being directed at Alicent rather than at her personally, even as she acknowledged how strange it feels when people talk about you as though they know you.
Olivia Cooke Stepping Back From Social Media
Cooke’s decision to limit her time online has become a recurring thread throughout her time on ‘House of the Dragon.’ She has said that stepping away from social media while filming allowed her to protect herself from constant body comparison and regain some sense of mental space.
That boundary setting extends beyond social media and into her approach to the work itself. In comments reported by Deadline, Cooke lamented that actresses often get labelled difficult or a bitch for speaking up when they are uncomfortable with intimate performances, while noting that the industry has improved now that intimacy coordinators have become standard on set. She called it remarkable that performers once had to navigate those scenes without that kind of support at all.
Do you think Olivia Cooke deserves the backlash for her weight?
Taken together, Cooke’s recent comments paint a picture of an actress trying to protect her wellbeing while still fulfilling the demands of one of television’s most scrutinized roles. As Alicent’s arc grows more difficult to watch, Cooke appears determined to keep some distance between herself and the noise surrounding her.
With ‘House of the Dragon’ season 3 pushing Alicent into increasingly humiliating territory and fans still debating where criticism of a character crosses into cruelty toward the actress, what do you make of how Olivia Cooke has chosen to respond to the backlash this season.
