\n<\/p>\n
Team Black<\/a> is finally taking flight. By the end of House of the Dragon<\/em><\/a> season 2, episode 6, \u201cSmall Folks,\u201d Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D\u2019Arcy<\/strong>) has joined the fray, hopping on her dragon, Syrax<\/a>, in search of the mysterious dragon rider who tamed Seasmoke. On Team Green, things fall further into disarray as Prince Regent Aemond (Ewan Mitchell<\/strong>) grabs even more power, kicking his mother, Queen Alicent (Olivia Cooke<\/strong>), off the high council.<\/p>\n On a new episode of Still Watching,<\/em> Mitchell chats about finding the darkness within Aemond\u2014and how evil he thinks the one-eyed prince really is. \u201cOn a scale of 1 to 10? He\u2019s up there,\u201d Mitchell admits. \u201cI would say he\u2019s probably a nine to the eyes of a lot of people. But in his eye, he\u2019s a one. He doesn\u2019t think anything he does is bad. It\u2019s all justified.\u201d<\/p>\n Vanity Fair:<\/em> Can you talk to us a little bit about how Aemond justifies his actions?<\/strong><\/p>\n Ewan Mitchell:<\/em> Aemond never really felt unconditional love growing up. He was the spare son, although he felt like he should have been treated as the first. It\u2019s the duty of the spare son to fight the war and to do the necessary evil, so to speak. He was neglected a lot as a child. He was bullied relentlessly by his nephews, his brother acting as ringleader. So Aemond very much wanted to find his place in the world. The thing is, if a child isn\u2019t embraced by the village, they\u2019ll burn it down to feel its warmth. And so Aemond, with this newfound power that he has with Vhagar, he will now seek validation and, ultimately, attention through other means\u2014through war.<\/p>\n Do you feel that Aemond made a wise decision kicking Alicent off the council?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah, it was tactical. I\u2019ve always kind of played with different motivations for him, one of them being that he wants his mom. He feels like he has to become the war hero and finish this war up, so then he finally has time to spend with his mum. Every time that I played a scene with Olivia Cooke, I always visualized Aemond and Alicent sitting on a Dornish beach, just sipping on pi\u00f1a coladas. Far from war. He can finally have that time with his mum that he\u2019s always craved, that he never really had.<\/p>\n He kind of had to harden himself into this weapon and manufacture himself into something lethal so he\u2019s never seen as weak again. It\u2019s a little bit like Michael Mann<\/strong>\u2019s Heat.<\/em> There\u2019s a quote in it that Robert De Niro<\/strong> says: \u201cNever get attached to someone you\u2019re not prepared to walk out on in 30 seconds flat when you feel the heat around the corner.\u201d That\u2019s the code that his character lives by.<\/p>\n Aemond has a similar kind of code that helps him. That\u2019s why he\u2019s so easily able to walk out on the madam: Love is weakness in his world. Alicent challenges that code\u2014she is, in fact, his kryptonite. With the people that you love most and the ones you want the most, you often have to push them out of the way to get what you want. It\u2019s similar to the kid in the playground who bullies his crush. He just doesn\u2019t want his mum at work. He wants to do the job at hand, and his mum can\u2019t get in his way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n