In the Max series House of the Dragon, Helaena Targaryen is by all accounts an eccentric. She is the family outcast. The only daughter of Alicent Hightower and King Viserys I, Helaena mostly keeps to herself, loves her books and bugs, often speaks in a cryptic language, and has been known to predict future events. Unfortunately, nobody is listening. It was a character emerging English actor Phia Saban could easily sink her teeth into, one she understood immediately.
When Saban joined HOTD at the end of season one, it was during a pivotal time jump in the story. Her version of Princess Helaena was six years older, no less peculiar, and thrust into adulthood by marrying her brother in a strategic move to protect the family line. It was an early glimpse into a dark future for the young royal. Those last three episodes presented an exciting moment for the next-gen cast to come in and bring a new energy to the series. They would also prove majorly influential in setting up what is undoubtedly a breakout performance for Saban.
As we return to Westeros in season two, we find Helaena—who is now queen with two young children of her own, one of whom is the heir to the Iron Throne—forced to make an impossible choice. The tragic events that unfold (spoilers ahead!) set in motion an innocence lost as we see how much someone can truly sacrifice for their family.
Just a few days before the show’s season premiere, I met with Saban via Zoom. She has just returned from the HOTD press tour and finds herself back in her London home facing a bit of culture shock. Following two weeks of red carpets, photo-calls, interviews, lavish designer clothes, and parties, she is now sitting in her London flat, her bed quite literally broken on the floor, and staring at a large load of laundry. This is the glamorous life of an actor.
We dig in.
You joined House of the Dragon at the end of season one as we see Princess Helaena Targaryen growing up. Can you take me back to your audition?
I did a tape for young Rhaenyra, but it was using Aria sides because it was under wraps. I basically didn’t hear back for like six months after that. At Christmas, I got another tape through for Helaena, and it was the scene where Alicent asks her if it would be alright for her to marry her brother for the family line. Helaena is reading her book, and she says, “I’ll do it for you,” [and she basically means], “He doesn’t want to marry me because he thinks I’m really weird, and everyone thinks I’m weird.” When I did that scene, I remember saying to the person I did the tape with, “I never ever feel like this with auditions,” and I was like, “Oh, I could really do that one.” I remember saying to my mom as well, “You never get these feelings with these things, but I feel like I could do that job.” I had a funny feeling about it, but I hadn’t heard back for ages.
In the meantime, I was hearing in Budapest [while filming The Last Kingdom] that Ewan [Mitchell] was doing meetings for House of the Dragon, and I was like, “That means I didn’t get a recall.” Eventually, I got my recall and had a Zoom with [writer Ryan J. Condal] and [casting director] Kate Rhodes James and [producer and director Miguel Sapochnik] and the showrunners. And then there were a few days where I felt so anxious that all I could do was nap, so I was unconscious and didn’t have to think about it. I would have these really long daytime naps and wake up and check my phone. One of those days, I got a message to say that I got the part, and then it was very surreal.
What was it like coming into this massive show late into the shoot?
We got to come in at a really fun moment because they had been filming for so long. There was a slight feeling that they all knew each other, but also, they were doing this monster project that was going on and on, so I think we felt like we could come in and be really excited and bring a new energy. Everyone was just so loving and welcoming. Those scenes were so fun because they were family scenes, and we all just got to be together and work out what our dynamics were, which is sometimes easier to do when you have less lines.
When we pick up in season two, Helaena is married to her brother and has two children, Jaehaerys and Jaehaera. Going from season one to two, how would you say her mindset and your performance have evolved?
From what I was saying with season one of it being a gift when you have time on set but less to do, I think that was really helpful because it became a way to do a character study of, How does she feel standing next to this brother? What’s her relationship to this room or the building or the dress that she wears or her grandfather or her mother? Because we had that establishing stuff where we are out of focus in the background, it was so fun to work that out. It was a gift I wouldn’t have had if I had just come in straight in season two.
That long time between season one and season two… Once I had a feeling of where Helaena sat in me, then I could do really fun stuff like go and watch a film in the theater or read a book or walk around and go, “Okay, if I know Helaena is sitting there, what in this book is relevant to her? What would she think of this and this?” You use them as a lens, which is really fun. I think that’s why a lot of people love acting. It’s refreshing for your life to not be about you.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Helaena is a peculiar one. When reading the book and script, what were some of things that you picked up on that helped inform your performance?
I find it really exciting and attractive from the character that she really struggles to be understood. Her communication isn’t received by her family. That is a really interesting thing to think about because there’s a level of discomfort there, but there’s also something which is quite fun in it, which is that you have to assume that that is a dynamic that has existed for a long, long time in those relationships. There’s almost a sense that her values are different to theirs. The things she sees as useful and beautiful, that’s not what they see as useful or beautiful. The things she sees as important, the things that she feels are worth saying out loud or learning about aren’t the same. In a way, she’s a character who has such an intense inner life and almost fantasy world of her own. … It’s a gift because you get to make up what that is.
Maybe it’s an escapism tactic for her.
In a way, it almost takes the pressure off her responsibility in the family. I think there’s a big balance there. In one way, she sacrifices so much of her personal freedoms for her family. In another way, there’s something there from a mothering perspective, from Alicent’s perspective, which is that actually she probably felt that the family was the safest place for [Helaena] because they let her have her freedoms in a way that’s important to her—like her things and her room and her insects and her books—which maybe wouldn’t have been accepted if she had been married into another family. It’s a sacrifice she makes for that comfort.
In episode one, Helaena has to make an impossible choice. What was your reaction when you first read that scene, and can you tell me a little about the prep and filming of it?
I knew that it was coming in the sense of the lore of the family and people talking about it, but definitely, I was like, “Okay, they’re doing that in episode one. That’s intense.” What was really important to me was to try and not get distracted by the scale of the show or what it’s meant to mean to people and let it be rooted in the reality of that character.
Something that I love about that character is that her responses, whether that’s a trauma response or just a response to dragons or to her family members or what’s required of her, it’s a bit surprising. I saw it as an opportunity to really delve into what that would be for her. … Fundamentally, despite what it is for her or for other people, it’s also just a moment of intense shock and emergency. I didn’t want to patronize myself or the character and be like, “Well, obviously, the response to this is X, Y, Z.” Actually, who knows how you would respond. As an actor, all you try to do is live in the moment as much as you possibly can to give credit to the scene. There’s a lot of space in that scene. There’s a lot of room, and it’s about that exact moment. It’s about that emergency, not this cabaret of emotion.
What’s great is when you have an opportunity to do something like that. You also get to work with new actors. I got to work with Sam [C. Wilson] and Mark [Stobbart], who played Blood and Cheese respectively, and that was really refreshing and cool, like a new energy on set. Helaena doesn’t get to converse with people who aren’t her family, and even then, they’re not that interested. Not to say she was having a chat with them, but I think it’s just really exciting from an acting perspective to be like, “What am I in relation to this new character, this man?” I guess I just tried to see it as an opportunity to go into Helaena but also just stay in the moment.
From your point of view, why did Helaena point to her son, the actual heir to the throne, over her daughter?
For one, simply, both of Helaena’s children are as important to her as each other. I think that actually speaks a lot to this whole thing of the family line and sacrifices. It’s the highest stakes imaginable. It’s too much of an emergency to fuck around with it. Not only that, but I think it’s deadly serious to her. They are threatening both her life and her kids’ lives, and she makes a completely impossible decision, which is to come out with as much chance of a surviving child as she can. I’m intrigued to see what the audience response will be to that. Obviously, it’s a very different experience shooting a scene than watching a scene because sometimes you feel like you’re seeing a different show. I am far too close to it to have an opinion on it probably. But from a character perspective, I do think that it’s literally a life-or-death situation, and she does what she can to save a child.
The loss of her child obviously has a huge impact on Helaena. What can we expect from her as we move through the season?
I think you see somebody in Helaena who has been pushed to the limit of what a person can sacrifice for their family. She is having a reckoning around that because what’s happened now is that the politics have invaded her sacred world. She is completely disrupted. She can also see in her mother and her mother’s guilt this life that Alicent was forced to live of duty and sacrifice and that trauma that has been inherited by Helaena. There’s a bit of a reckoning of “If I know how this is going to end,” and I don’t even mean that in a magic, foresight way. … This is what’s happening, then you just see someone coming to terms with that, and she’s almost like a fly in amber. It’s turmoil and a loss of innocence.
I think that’s actually happening with everyone. In a show where there is so much heroism and the heroism comes in the terms of “I’m going to get on my dragon and fly to war, [and] I’m going to fight them on the beaches,” I think that she has a smaller heroism. It’s to do with processing and being forced out of her safe world and being forced into the real world and coming to terms with what she can take.
Olivia Cooke plays Alicent, your on-screen mom, but you two aren’t that far apart in age. When you’re not filming, would you say you have more of a mother-daughter or sister dynamic?
It’s definitely a sisterly bond. I would also say women are kind of like mothers to each other. I feel like she holds me in so many ways, and there are times when I feel like I genuinely don’t know what I’d do on this job if I didn’t have Olivia talking me back to sense with worries and everything. I also like to think that she does feel held by me as well in a different way. I’ve been put in taxis by Olivia and driven to get my phone fixed five times. I’ve been brought spare socks by Olivia. I don’t know if it’s that way around for her, but I think in a different way we have that for each other. She’s an extremely loving and patient person, so I feel really lucky to have her as my on-screen mom.
What have been some of your biggest learnings/takeaways while working on such a big production like House of the Dragon?
What I’m learning is about being brave. The cast of this show… From my perspective, I cannot believe this cast. Part of that is that nobody is afraid to be surprising or subvert the genre. People are genuinely bringing so much of themselves to it that I feel that has inspired me. Sometimes, there is this thing where screen acting has to be quite small and intense. That’s a gift to be able to go, How little can I do? But I’m really learning to have self-belief and bravery so that you can make an interesting choice that you can commit to, that can be refreshing to an audience of a fantasy show. … On something this big, it’s important to keep a level of irreverence for it in order to not take yourself too seriously but also to bring something a bit strange, which is something I’m still learning to do. I can be so hard on myself. I will overthink and overthink and overthink, and that’s actually the enemy of making a choice because the safest thing to do is not very much. But we’ll see. I might be there being absolutely microscopic.
You have been working with stylist Cher Coulter for this round of HOTD press. How would you describe your style, and why did Coulter feel like a good match for you stylistically?
Cher has such an amazing energy and atmosphere about her. She’s so hardworking. She’s got such a good sense of humor. She’s hilarious. She knows her shit, and she doesn’t play it safe as well. She’s basically just cool, and we spoke a lot about Chloë Sevigny, who is my childhood [idol]. I have a lot of pictures of her printed out in my childhood bedroom. More so than just replicating that, I love when something looks like it could come from your wardrobe, but it’s a heightened version that just seems right on that person. The amazing thing about having an amazing stylist is you get introduced to things where you’re like, “Yeah, that is me” [and] that you wouldn’t otherwise have access to.
Bless Cher so much—she’s incredible. I think it was two weeks before the first press engagement that I called her and was like, “Okay, I want to work with you.” It was a whirlwind but so fun. Genuinely, I didn’t think I would enjoy it as much as I did. But that creative element, especially working with an amazing hair and makeup team and with the clothes, I really found that playful joy of doing a play or something [in] getting ready every day.
Did you have a theme or direction in mind for the press tour?
It really was that things just started coming together. For example, the Dior when we were in Paris. We got to go into Dior, and I tried on two things. One had this tie, and I really, really want to wear a tie, but it just wasn’t the right moment. One was a Marlene Dietrich–inspired suit, who is also an idol of mine. That shape seemed so cool, and I was like, “Perfect, we can do this in Paris.” But the thing that me and Cher spoke about a lot is… Okay, if we’re going to do that really classic suit, then how are we going to cool it up with face and hair? We were sending each other references. I think it was a Yohji Yamamoto old campaign, but it was John Galliano and French Revolution kind of hair. So we put those together and got really excited.
With the Stella McCartney [for the NYC premiere], I put it on and felt like a big dragon egg. That Yohji Yamamoto dress felt like the most London option. Every single one of my press looks had collars but all different collars, so it was suddenly coming together. At one point, we were deciding between one look and another, and I was like, “We obviously need the one with the collar so they all have collars!” We would get so excited. It was really fun.
Do you have a favorite look of all of them?
Well, me and Cher were also talking about this, and Cher was like, “I can’t choose.” But all of my best friends, their favorite of mine was a Yohji Yamamoto look I wore in Paris for one of the press days, which was this black shirt with the white buttons down the front and these amazing white shoulders. That whole look was really fun to wear. Everyone who knows and loves me [said] that’s their favorite, so I’ll go to the jury on that one.
Catch up on House of the Dragon season two, now streaming on Max.
