Emma D'Arcy Drops Some Harsh Truth for Those Criticizing HotD's Controversial Scenes
Just like Game of Thrones in its time, House of the Dragon, its prequel is (in)famous for being spectacularly gory and full of gruesome scenes.
However, the sort of gruesome scenes that appear House of the Dragon are substantially different. In particular, over just ten episodes it features not less than four extended birth scenes, and three of those births end up going wrong, with someone dying in the process, to boot.
The "House of the Midwifes" nickname from the fans who did not appreciate those scenes isn't exactly unearned.
And there was quite a number of fans who did not appreciate those scenes, particularly as one of them was hardly plot-critical, and another involved a character who got introduced (as her adult self) and died in the same episode.
To some they were just exceedingly and distastefully gruesome. Others asked whether there really was a need to spend so much screentime on childbirth scenes, while a number of characters remained so undeveloped that they were barely more than extras by the moment of their supposedly emotionally impactful deaths?
For example, the finale would have struck much harder, had we actually got to know Prince Lucerys, and, as noted above, the same goes for Laena Velaryon, one of the women who died in childbirth during the show.
Now Emma D'Arcy, who played Rhaenyra Targaryen, answered at least the former group, pointed out in an interview that it shouldn't be controversial to see women in labor depicted in film and on television. "But I take real issue with the idea that we shouldn't see women in labor depicted with gritty realism, and blood, and placentas."
"What it feels like is that we want women to conform to a certain image," D'Arcy added (via GQ). "Which is interesting, insofar as acting is concerned, because, there's also a lot of fun to be had getting to do the big physical, physically demanding sequences. And it's interesting that maybe sometimes that is not afforded to female characters."
Well, this does not actually address all of the criticism, but as she noted in the same interview, "I haven't seen loads of it to be honest."