Phia Saban said she played Helaena’s response to Jaehaerys’s death by asking what this particular character would do—not by copying how she herself might react. In the season 2 premiere of House of the Dragon, Helaena’s strikingly calm delivery can look unfeeling. Saban cautioned viewers against assuming how anyone would behave in a situation this traumatic.
What happens in Helaena’s first major moment of horror?
Near the end of the season 2 premiere, “A Son for a Son,” assassins known as Blood and Cheese kill Helaena’s son Jaehaerys. Helaena then reaches Alicent’s room carrying her other child and tells Alicent what has happened. Alicent is there with Ser Criston Cole, making the revelation especially charged.
Helaena delivers the news with remarkable composure. That choice—not a close comparison between the episode and George R. R. Martin’s Fire & Blood—was the focus of actor Phia Saban’s interview with Cheryl Eddy for Gizmodo’s io9, published June 18, 2024.
How did Phia Saban decide how Helaena would react?
Saban said it took time to find the scene’s response. Rather than use her own imagined reaction as a template, she focused on Helaena as a specific person and on how that character might deal with what had happened. That approach gave her boundaries for the performance while leaving room to discover what felt right within them.
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“That was the most exciting thing about playing that scene for me, because some aspects were scary,” she said. “I had to try and find—something that was cool and positive was reminding myself: this is a specific character, and [we are showing] how she would deal with this. And in a way, that gave quite good boundaries within which to see what happened.”
Why does Helaena seem so calm after Jaehaerys’s death?
Saban acknowledged that some viewers might read Helaena’s apparent lack of visible emotion as unfeeling. Her point was not that the character is unaffected, but that an observer cannot prescribe what a person’s behavior should look like under extreme trauma. Helaena is already particular and distinctive; Saban suggested that those qualities could become more pronounced when the situation becomes overwhelming.
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“I think people are surprised by her apparent lack of—for example, at the end of the episode when she comes in on Alicent and Criston and the way she delivers the information that Jaehaerys is dead, people have been like, ‘that was a bit unfeeling.’ But I think that you can’t underestimate how you behave in something that is as high stakes and as traumatic as that,” Saban said.
Saban also described the distance between Helaena’s response and her own as something she could engage with as an actor. She emphasized that the scene is difficult to imagine from the outside, rather than offering her performance as a universal model for grief.
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Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.“And I think she’s someone who is so particular and specific anyway that it would be understandable that it would be an intensified version of that when the shit really hits the fan. I kind of had fun with [her reaction] being quite far from [how I would actually react]. Also, luckily for everyone, no one will have to go through that. But you can’t imagine. You can’t imagine what it would be like. I can’t imagine.”
What does the interview say about the show and Fire & Blood?
The interview identifies George R. R. Martin’s Fire & Blood as the source material for House of the Dragon and names Blood and Cheese as the assassins. It does not offer a detailed book-to-screen comparison of this sequence, so it cannot establish which specific elements of the scene were changed for television.
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Read Cheryl Eddy’s full interview with Phia Saban at Gizmodo’s io9.
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