A Game of Thrones princess! Emma D’Arcy earned their first Golden Globe nomination for portraying Rhaenyra Targaryen on the GoT spinoff, House of the Dragon.
“Hahahahahhahaha cripes …what a normal thing to be happening,” the 30-year-old England native — who identifies as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns — wrote via Instagram in December 2022 after learning that they had been nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series — Drama.
D’Arcy — who costarred in House of the Dragon with Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke and Paddy Considine — was the only prequel performer to score an individual acting nod at the 2023 Golden Globes, which is broadcast live on Tuesday, January 10. The show overall also scored a nomination for Best Television Series — Drama. “Get in there dragons,” they continued via Instagram about the honor.
House of the Dragon — which premiered on HBO in August 2022 — serves as a prequel series to GoT, where the ancestors of Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys Targaryen are ruling Westeros. House of the Dragon explains how a civil war started and divided the Targaryen brood. D’Arcy’s Rhaenyra was named late king’s direct heir, a role that catapulted the Wanderlust actor to widespread acclaim.
“Suddenly there’s like an avatar of you that exists in the world and it’s separate from you, and yet maybe it still requires you as an energy source somehow,” D’Arcy told Entertainment Weekly in October 2022 of navigating fame. “I’m learning about that relationship and learning to admire the avatar and allow the avatar a separate life and its own profession. And it’s got its own occupation. I would like to read something on that, as well, actually.”
They continued at the time: “I probably have a complicated relationship, I’m sure as most people do, with having a public profile, but I suppose being able to help the broad spectrum of gender identities sounds like a good reason to have one. So I feel very lucky to just continue what for me is a very exciting plane of discussion — and nice to be able to do that both to an extent onscreen and separately offscreen.”
The Mothering Sunday star, who came out as nonbinary shortly after landing their House of the Dragon role, has found a kinship in Rhaenyra.
“I was drawn to Rhaenyra because I saw a person who, from a young age, was sort of obsessed with masculinity,” they recalled to British GQ in November 2022. “Part of that is an appreciation for the space afforded to men. As a child, my hyper-awareness of gender presentation was the same as Rhaenyra’s. I craved the right to take up space in the way that I saw men doing naturally.”
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