Olivia Cooke Breaks Her Silence on the Body Shaming Behind ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 3 Backlash
Olivia Cooke has never shied away from admitting that playing Alicent Hightower in ‘House of the Dragon‘ comes with a price. As the show gears up for its most consequential chapter yet, the actress has found herself at the center of a conversation that has little to do with her performance and everything to do with how fans have treated her online.
Cooke’s remarks about cruelty from the fandom resurfaced just as excitement was building for ‘House of the Dragon’ season 3, adding a strange undercurrent to what should have been a celebratory rollout. What started as pointed criticism of her character has, according to multiple reports, spilled into deeply personal attacks on Cooke herself.
Olivia Cooke’s Weight Gain Comments Spark Renewed Outrage
Fans compiling examples of hate directed at the cast have pointed to comments about Cooke’s appearance as some of the ugliest examples of the backlash. One Reddit user gathered a series of hateful posts targeting Cooke’s Alicent along with other cast members, noting it took less than three minutes to compile the examples. The same post specifically called out remarks aimed at castmates over their bodies, framing the pile on as something fans owe no one.
The Reddit thread argued that actors do not owe audiences anything, since they are compensated for their work rather than for absorbing insecurity driven hostility from strangers.
The user singled out the treatment of Cooke and Tom Glynn Carney as particularly baffling, since much of it stemmed from viewers unable to separate the actors from their fictional characters. One especially pointed line in the thread questioned why body shaming toward actor Ewan Mitchell was excused simply because he gets paid for his role.
The pattern of commentary suggests that criticism of Alicent as a character has, for some corners of the fandom, curdled into something far more personal. Rather than debating her choices in the story, posters have gone after Cooke’s physical appearance directly, a shift that many longtime viewers of ‘House of the Dragon’ say crosses an obvious line.
The ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 3 Premiere Put Cooke Back in the Spotlight
The timing of this renewed scrutiny lines up almost exactly with the show’s return. HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’ prequel came back 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. With the Dance of the Dragons now fully underway, the stakes for the story, and apparently for its stars, are higher than ever.
Alicent sits at the center of that conflict, since her decisions backing her son’s claim and navigating rising violence have made her one of the most divisive figures on the show. That divisiveness has always fueled online debate, but this season it appears to have tipped into something uglier for Cooke personally.
Shortly after the season 3 trailer dropped, fans noticed something telling. Cooke deactivated her Instagram account, and viewers quickly connected the move to comments she had previously made about the horrible treatment directed at the cast. For a star who had used the platform to share glimpses of her life outside Westeros, the silence spoke volumes.
Olivia Cooke Addresses the Fan Backlash Head On
Cooke has not stayed quiet about how this treatment makes her feel. In a previous interview, she said some fans have been horrible to the cast, adding that it makes her angry that they are expected to bow down to people who only want to say the most hateful things. She noted that the cast has leaned on each other to get through it, even while acknowledging that leaning on one another does not make the behavior acceptable.
Cooke has also described encounters away from social media, saying strangers will approach her in public, take a photo, and then tell her directly that they hate her character, sometimes with genuine malice behind the words. She has admitted she does not fully understand why Alicent in particular draws such an intense reaction, especially since she has only ever tried to play the character with as much nuance as possible.
In an interview with TheWrap, Cooke described Alicent as being a bit like Marmite among fans, meaning people either love her or cannot stand her. She revealed she generally tries to stay off social media to avoid getting pulled into the noise, though she said avoiding it entirely is not always possible, recalling one moment at a pub with castmates when a stranger approached her uninvited.
That kind of candor has made Cooke something of a lightning rod herself, caught between defending her craft and processing the very real toll that public criticism has taken on her.
Alicent Hightower Fan Hate Reflects a Larger Pattern in the Fandom
Much of the conversation around Cooke’s treatment has connected back to how ‘House of the Dragon’ fans engage with morally complicated characters more broadly. Alicent has never received the same warm reception that the show’s first season enjoyed overall, largely because her choices have repeatedly and negatively affected fan favorite characters like Rhaenyra Targaryen.
Marketing that leaned into a Team Green versus Team Black framing only intensified the divide, encouraging fans to pick sides in a way that has fueled tense exchanges across social media. That dynamic has made it easier for genuine narrative criticism to blur into targeted hostility toward the actors themselves rather than staying focused on the story.
Some observers have pointed out that Alicent is far from the only morally gray figure in this universe, yet she faces backlash on a different scale than many of the men who commit equally troubling acts within the story. That imbalance has become part of the broader conversation about how audiences hold female characters to different standards than their male counterparts.
As ‘House of the Dragon’ continues telling the story of a fractured Targaryen dynasty, the treatment of its cast has become its own kind of subplot, one that many fans argue deserves just as much attention as anything happening in Westeros. With Cooke stepping back from Instagram and speaking candidly about the toll this has taken, do you think fandoms need to draw a clearer line between critiquing a character and attacking the person who plays her?
