The only way is up for Olivia Cooke (2024)

Breaking news: Olivia Cooke is not a fan of a negroni sbagliato. She confesses this to me from the kitchen table of her east-London home as she sips on a cup of tea. “Emma [D’Arcy, the actor] made me one not so long ago and I didn’t like it,” she says, grimacing. “I’d prefer a normal negroni.”

In case you missed it, back in October, a clip of Cooke’s House of the Dragon co-star D’Arcy discussing their drink of choice with her went viral. D’Arcy explained theirs was a “negroni… sbagliato… with prosecco in it”, to which Cooke replied: “Ooh, stunning.”

Cue 63.4 million views of negroni sbagliato memes on TikTok, not to mention Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern posting a video of them trying one last week. Cooke is baffled by the response. “I’d never heard of it and now the world has twice over,” she says, pushing a strand of curly brown hair out of her eyes. She’s wearing a blue chevron-patterned jumper, and large gold hoops adorn her ears. “I was in the pub the other day and a Spanish girl held the door open for me and went, ‘Ooh, stunning!’”

It’s hardly surprising the clip was so popular. Not only is Cooke immediately likeable, charming and funny, but this has also been a hugely successful year for her, after she fronted (with D’Arcy) the biggest television show of 2022. The inaugural series of House of the Dragon, the HBO Game of Thrones spin-off set 200 years previously, premiered in August and reportedly averaged 29 million viewers an episode across the first five instalments.

Cooke plays Queen Alicent Hightower for the second half of the series (Emily Carey starts off as the teenage iteration); she appears from episode six onwards as the wife of King Viserys I Targaryen (Paddy Considine), and the stepmother and former best friend of Princess Rhaenerya Targaryen (D’Arcy). She admits that, even after 10 years working in the industry, she was shocked by the attention she has received.

“It’s different, for sure,” she explains. “When my episodes aired, I was subject to an immediate visibility that I hadn’t experienced before when I was walking down the street. I’m so naïve, but I think I was purposely so because I didn’t want to confront this anxiety.”

As for the online reaction, it has been frenzied. “The Game of Thrones fans have been quite noisy, and having to block your ears and eyes from that has been a challenge,” says Cooke. “It’s like the school playground – you want to know what everyone is saying about you and what’s been said.” Initially, she would look up comments about her performance on social media. “I did in the beginning, and I was like, ‘f*ck me’,” she says. “I was self-flagellating. It’s mad because what they’re talking about is this fantasy version of me that doesn’t exist whatsoever. People talk about you like they know you and it’s just so odd. All you can do is be as authentic as possible.”

Cooke grew up in Oldham in Greater Manchester, and has been working in the industry since she was 18. She was always interested in acting and auditioned for drama school. “But it didn’t feel like a viable option because I didn’t know anyone who was an actor, aside from maybe someone by five degrees of separation in Corrie. Going into a soap because you’ve got this accent felt like the only option – even then, I knew I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to be committed to something for ever.”

By chance, she was spotted by a casting director who got her a small part as Christopher Eccleston’s daughter in the BBC miniseries Blackout. She has gone on to have roles in projects ranging from the film Sound of Metal, starring alongside Riz Ahmed, to the romantic comedy series Modern Love – her episode was opposite Andrew Scott. She landed the role of Alicent in October 2020.

Filming for House of the Dragon took place over 10 months, mainly at Warner Brothers’ digital-production stage in Watford. She admits that it was an intense process. “There are a lot of scenes that take two weeks to film. You have to have mental stamina, which I hadn’t experienced before,” she says. I ask her how she relaxed at the end of each day. “We don’t really have time to decompress,” she says.

“The decompression is in the car on your way home from Watford. Emma and I were saying we need to find a local pub. There are so many productions filmed at Leavesden, I’m surprised they haven’t opened a bar. Not even to drink in, just to relax in before you take it all home. You want a severance from the show.”

Thankfully, the energy of co-stars such as Rhys Ifans, who plays her father, the complex Otto Hightower, kept everyone going. “A lot of my scenes were with Fabien Frankel, and Rhys, who was just hysterical,” she says. “He’s such a naughty little schoolboy and has this incredible ability to stay as serious and stoic as possible, but cause absolute mayhem for the rest of the cast.

“It’s so important to have someone like that on set who is a disruptor; it keeps you on your toes and makes it a joy coming to work. He made up so many nicknames for Fabien that he would say just before a take, like, ‘Oi Tinder Swindler!’ Or, ‘Oi Justin Bieber!’ And then it’ll be, ‘Action’. I’d suddenly be in character saying to him, ‘Don’t kill Rhaenerya, please.’”

Cooke also spent six weeks in 2022 shooting Mother’s Milk in Albany, New York, opposite Hilary Swank. The film follows a journalist who forms an alliance with her son’s pregnant girlfriend to find his killers. In the spring, she starts filming the second House of the Dragon series, although it will not air until 2024. “We’re still waiting on scripts,” she explains. “We know what is loosely in the book but not exactly which strands of history they go down. We’re going to be in different parts of the UK this time. Spain again, maybe Portugal.”

It is important to Cooke to work on as varied a set of projects as she can. “I don’t want to be repetitive,” she says. “I always want to feel challenged, no matter what the role, to feel that eroticism for life. Sometimes that comes in spades with this job, which is what makes it so intoxicating. You have that experience that’s almost org*smic and you’re chasing that until you hopefully find it again.”

Alongside her filmed projects, Cooke was signed as an ambassador for the royal-jewellery brand Garrard in October. In the same month, she released her first lingerie campaign for Savage x Fenty, although the experience didn’t sit in her comfort zone. “I looked like that for six hours in my whole 28 years on the Earth,” she says. “I’m not a girl who is stick-thin, and I’m conscious of my bum, thighs and belly. But looking at those pictures, I’m like, oh my God. I look so strong and capable and womanly. I was really nervous, but there was a DJ on set and everyone was screaming praise. I have never felt more amazing in my life. It was like my wedding day.”

For now, Cooke is looking forward to a break, so that she can watch lots of television (The White Lotus is a favourite) and generally relax. Christmas will be spent at home in Manchester with her family, and she plans to return to London in time for her 29th birthday on 27 December. “I’ll be waking up in my childhood bedroom as I turn another year older,” she says, smiling. But before heading off she is hoping for a “Christmas pint” with Ifans, and tonight she’s out for dinner with D’Arcy and Milly Alco*ck. (“We’re all really close”, she says of the House of the Dragon cast.)

For all the challenges her sudden fame has brought, she still sees the show’s success as something worth celebrating. “Often, you do a job and you wonder how it’s going to be perceived, but this superseded all of our expectations,” she says. “Now we’ve just got the pressure of season two…”

Photographer Josh Shinner

Styling Rosie Arkell-Palmer

Hair Ken O’Rourke

Make-up Alex Babsky

Nails Michelle Class

Fashion assistant Hannah Akande

Executive digital editor Sarah Karmali