House of the Dragon's Ewan Mitchell on creating Aemond's nude scene in new episode
Having spent more than a decade in the GOT universe, it takes quite a lot to shock us when it comes to watching the most recent episodes of House of the Dragon, but one very surprising thing that was not on our season two bingo card was a fully frontal nude scene of Aemond. And now director Geeta Patel and actor Ewan Mitchell, who plays Aemond, have revealed exactly what went into filming the vulnerable scene.
Towards the end of episode three 'The Burning Mill', King Aegon and his group of questionable Kingsguard mates go on a night out on the town (sorry does he not have a kingdom to look after?), and run into Aemond spending the night with his favourite madam. Except it's not quite as explicit as you would imagine, instead Aemond is being cradled in the arms of the madam, and having his hair stroked, while nude, until his brother ruins everything.
Obviously upset at being disturbed by his older brother and his group of cronies, Aemond gets up and leaves the room but not before walking away fully naked. And now Ewan Mitchell has revealed this moment was designed to purposely shock the audience.
"Scenes like this start with a conversation about how far you’re prepared to go. It wasn’t a choice we made lightly. But it’s true to Aemond that he shocks the audience," he revealed to Vulture. "Weakness is not part of Aemond’s vocabulary."
Weakness might not be, but vulnerability is, and Mitchell revealed he wanted to use that scene in the brothel to explore that side of Aemond's character.
"Aegon catches Aemond in a vulnerable spot. Picking up the script for the first time and seeing those brothel scenes in episode two and three, I saw a brilliant opportunity to offer a rare glimpse of his vulnerability. You only ever see him in his Targaryen blacks, so to see him in that world — not only that, but then humiliated by his brother — is quite shocking," he explained.
Director Geeta Patel has also shed light on how they went about creating the scene, explaining to Variety she spoke extensively with Ewan Mitchell about how the scene would work.
"Ewan is such a great actor. He understands what he needs to do in order to portray Aemond. When I spoke with him originally about the nudity, I said to him, 'Let’s just go through the story. If you don’t feel comfortable being nude, then you’re not going to be nude.' We were both on the same page in that way," she said.
Patel went onto explain just how well Mitchell knows the character of Aemond, "We started walking through, and he walked me through his character. One thing about directing that’s really important is to surrender to the actors, and the actors surrender. It’s a mutual surrendering. In this case, Ewan knew his character so well that I was listening to him and walking with him as we went through every episode before this."
Patel also explained the character of Aemond is someone who was bullied when they were younger, but has now built a wall up around themselves, and the point of the scene with the madam was to show Aemond go from being vulnerable to not caring, which is how Mitchell came to the decision to be nude.
"That shift, from someone who’s vulnerable to literally watching him put on his armour, was what we were going for in that scene. It’s one of the few times you see the young child in him and you see the pain in him," she explained. "Slowly he starts putting on his armour and when he stands up, the fact that he doesn’t care that you see his penis is such a strong visceral shift. And so, of course, Ewan was like, 'I want to be fully nude in that moment. It’s important to me because that’s who my character is. That’s what he would do.' And that’s what we did."
House of the Dragon is now streaming on NOW
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