Olivia Cooke has spoken about the “ugly” fandom that made her quit social media around season three.
Cooke plays Alicent Hightower in the prequel, which deals with the power struggle between her family and her step-daughter/former-bestie Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy).
Season three aired earlier this year and Cooke was involved in a handful of controversial scenes, including an incestious kiss with her son that inspired him to have a sex dream about her. Some fans criticised Cooke for her character’s actions, others blamed director Clare Kilner for forcing her into uncomfortable scenes.
“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 in an interview with . “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.”
She went on to say it was one of the reasons she deactivated her social media accounts shortly before season three aired. “I was just like, I’m on this too much. It’s not nourishing,” she explained.
“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.”
Following the time-jump in season one of , some fans pitted Cooke and D’Arcy against their younger counterparts, Emily Carey and Milly Alcock. “It broke my heart,” Alcock said in an interview with .
“It definitely made me aware that simply existing as a woman in that space is something that people comment on,” she added in an interview with . “We have become very comfortable having this weird ownership of women’s bodies.”
“It’s an unfortunate by-product of the internet rage machine – we have so turned against ourselves in fandom,” added showrunner Ryan Condal. “This kind of fandom used to be the happy place to go, where people who liked different things within the same world could just find common ground.”
author George R.R. Martin previously called out the “toxic” fanbase after the backlash to the show’s ending. “The internet is toxic in a way that the old fanzine culture and fandoms – comic fans, science fiction fans in those days – was not. There were disagreements. There were feuds, but nothing like the madness that you see on the internet.”