Olivia Cooke is getting candid about one of the reasons she took a break from social media, saying there’s “a lot of ugliness” in House of the Dragon fandom.
The actress, who plays controversial Queen Alicent Hightower in HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel series, recently chatted with GQ about the passionate yet intense fanbase that often theorizes about not only her character but sometimes herself and her relationship with directors.
“I think some of those interpretations just catch fire, and they become something that bears no resemblance to what was shown on the screen at the time,” Cooke said. “There’s a lot of ugliness to that fandom as well. It’s steeped in misogyny. There’s a lot of racism. I try to let it take up minimal mental real estate.”
Eventually, the fan discourse on social media reached a point that was “not nourishing” for the actress, which is partly why she deactivated her social media accounts ahead of the House of the Dragon season three premiere in June.
“I was just like, I’m on this too much. It’s not nourishing,” she said. “I think the celebri-fied nature of being an actor has now snowballed into this monster. And I just think we need to get off this train and realise that we make these TV shows and films, yes, for escapism, but also because it’s artful and it’s creative and it’s not for followers or for a brand deal or to get free shit. Even though that is nice sometimes.”
Cooke isn’t the only actor in the Game of Thrones universe to open up about the negative impact of social media. Sophie Turner, who played Sansa Stark in the original series starting at the age of 14, told Flaunt last year that it started to take a toll on her mental health as a young actress.
“I think social media was just really becoming a big thing after I started on Game of Thrones, so I got a couple of years of peace and quiet and then I had to adjust. It had such a profound impact on my mental health, like more than I could tell you,” Turner said. “It almost destroyed me on numerous occasions.”