Olivia Cooke Says She Went Offline Over House of the Dragon Fandom
Olivia Cooke, who plays Queen Alicent Hightower in HBO's House of the Dragon, has stepped back from social media. She told British GQ that she went offline ahead of the show's third season because of the ugliness she saw in its fandom.
Cooke has deactivated her Instagram account, which means she has switched it off rather than deleted it. In the interview, she said the House of the Dragon fandom is steeped in misogyny and contains a lot of racism. She described the online reaction to her character as part of why she stepped away.
The show's third season was set to arrive in June. In it, Alicent shares a kiss with her son, and the moment leads into a daydream scene with incestuous content. Variety reported the season's storyline on the same day as the interview's wider coverage, and that scene has been among the points of discussion among viewers.
House of the Dragon first aired on HBO in 2022. It is a prequel to Game of Thrones, set long before those events, and it follows the power struggles inside the Targaryen royal family. The series has earned three Golden Globe nominations and one win for best television series, drama. At the Emmys, it has been nominated 14 times and has won two awards: outstanding fantasy/sci-fi costumes in 2023, and outstanding period or fantasy/sci-fi makeup (non-prosthetic) in 2025.
Cooke's interview also covers her return to Slow Horses, the spy drama in which she appears. She talks about time off that burnout forced on her, her views on toxic fandoms and social media, and what she wants to do next. The conversation shows an actor weighing how much of the public conversation around her work she wants to be part of.
For fans of the show, the immediate change is simple. Cooke is no longer posting on Instagram, and the season's storylines remain the same. For the people who work on the series, from the writers to the cast and crew, the attention on the actors' online lives is a growing part of the job. Cooke's comments are a reminder that the fan conversation around a show can be felt by the people on screen.
