For the House of the Dragon audition, Emma D’Arcy went DIY with a wig
Emma D’Arcy recalls building a bizarre wig for a House of the Dragon audition — and the DIY route went in an unexpectedly wild direction.
Stuck in lockdown with stores closed, Emma D’Arcy and their partner made a last-ditch run to a supermarket, grabbed a pack of hair clips and a hot glue gun, and built a DIY wig at the kitchen table. It was the only way to satisfy an audition request for House of the Dragon : send a photo wearing long Targaryen hair.
D’Arcy told the story on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, explaining that showrunners wanted to see how they’d look as Rhaenyra Targaryen. With very short hair and no wig shops open during COVID, D’Arcy dug out loose hair they’d saved from a previous job, sent in a test photo, got a note to “keep trying,” and kept tinkering. The homemade look didn’t resemble the show’s final wig, but it did the trick — D’Arcy landed the role.
“Literally, a bag of hair, pieces of weft with no way of attaching them to your head,” D’Arcy said.
“We like, went to a supermarket, and we bought like some clips and like a hot glue gun, and then we started sticking bits of hair to the clips.”
Hair tests across Westeros
In George R.R. Martin’s world, looks carry story weight — especially that unmistakable Targaryen silver. It’s no surprise hair checks start early in auditions across the franchise.
For the upcoming prequel A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms , young actor Dexter Sol Ansell needed to appear bald to play Egg. Instead of a prosthetic cap, he opted to shave his head — and was even asked to do it during the audition. He agreed, but actually went under the clippers only after he officially got the role.