House of the Dragon’s full-frontal naked scene addressed by actor Ewan Mitchell
Ewan Mitchell pulls out his sword in the latest episode of House of the Dragon. (HBO)
HBO’s House of the Dragon may have just pulled off its best sword scene to-date, as The Greens’ Kinslayer Aemond Targaryen has gone full-frontal in season two’s most recent episode.
Episode three of the fantasy drama series saw Aemond Targaryen, played by Saltburn’s Ewan Mitchell, cosying up to a sex worker in one of King’s Landing’s brothels following a night out on the town.
Yet, after being interrupted and ridiculed by his older brother and now King, Aegon II Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney), Aemond is faced with two choices: take the insults lying down, or prove that, after years of being put down by his sibling, he can no longer be harmed by it.
He opted for the latter: after standing up, he turns away from his madam, stands fully naked in front of Aegon, and walks out.
Not only does he prove that he’s got balls of steel, he also makes it clear that having Westeros’ biggest dragon isn’t the only thing his enemies should be jealous of.
Speaking about the “shocking” scene – which has already left countless fans slack-jawed – Mitchell explained that he saw a brilliant opportunity to show Aemond’s vulnerability by going nude.
“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,” the actor told Vulture.
He described Aemond as now being in a place that “stops him from being hurt like he was as a kid”, when he was the only child left without a dragon egg.
“That’s why he’s able to walk out on the madam in that scene. He’s humiliated by his brother and all his crew, and it’s like this switch flips. The madam is no more. All of these people in front of him? They mean nothing,” Mitchell explained.
“He stands up, he owns it. ‘Yeah, I’m bulletproof. Anything you say, it will not work.’”
While the actor said that going nude wasn’t a “choice made lightly”, director Geeta Patel told Variety that she and Mitchell knew it was “important” for the character’s development.
“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 shared.
Patel added that, while Aemond has built up persona of “someone who doesn’t give a f**k”, he is caught in vulnerable moment, and the nude scene was about him putting on his metaphorical armour.
“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,” she said.
“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.”
While House of the Dragon isn’t exactly known for its pleasing queer sex scenes – considering the most famous ones have featured incest, or been left on the cutting room floor – gay fans have been left deeply satisfied by Aemond’s appendage.
“I hope that tonight everyone can appreciate this statuesque man, I’ve never seen anything more beautiful,” wrote one fan, with a second writing: “Men should not be this beautiful, it feels wrong.”
House of the Dragon continues on HBO on Sundays in the US and on Sky Atlantic and Now TV on Mondays in the UK.
