The way this played out was almost predictable, and that’s what made it so depressing. In interviews last year, Olivia Cooke, a 32-year-old actress from Oldham who has played Alicent Hightower in three seasons of House of the Dragon, revealed that she had gained weight for the first time in her life. It was essentially liberating, according to her description. She claimed that she had been fortunate enough to never consider her body in that manner in the past and that navigating the current atmosphere of scrutiny surrounding women’s bodies, which was heightened by the Ozempic era, was exhausting.
It ought to have ended there. It wasn’t.
A portion of the fandom concluded that Cooke’s appearance was the true story when the show returned on June 22 for its eagerly anticipated third season, with the Dance of the Dragons finally roaring into full flame. Under premiere images and videos, comments piled up; some of them were so hurtful that fans started gathering them as proof. It took less than three minutes, according to one Reddit user, to compile a collection of body-shaming posts directed at Cooke and multiple cast members. For three minutes. From a distance, it’s difficult to avoid feeling that the way viewers relate to the characters on their screens has changed.
It appears that some of the confusion stems from viewers’ inability to distinguish between Alicent and the actress portraying her. Alicent is a contentious character who has always generated intense discussion because she is both cunning and wounded in equal measure. Alright. That’s television operating as it should. However, it’s a big step from criticizing a fictional queen’s decisions to analyzing an actress’s waist size, and those who do it don’t seem to realize it.
To her credit, Cooke hasn’t remained silent. She has openly discussed the gendered nature of this scrutiny, pointing out that the system gives commenters far more power than the women they are criticizing. In her recent interviews, there’s a sense of steel mixed with tiredness. Despite being barely in her thirties, she spent 2025 promoting The Girlfriend alongside Robin Wright, portraying a grandmother in Westeros and happily acknowledging that she wears a wig on the show because, in her words, she did “that girl thing” with her real hair. According to most accounts, she is surprisingly unguarded for someone this well-known.
It’s unclear if the cacophony will lessen as the season goes on. The audience for the show is still huge, and HBO has more significant battles to stage—literal ones. However, there’s a feeling that this episode will endure as a tiny case study of how fandoms, while claiming to love the stories those women tell, police women’s bodies. Cooke appears adamant about not shrinking to fit the commentary. That may be the most queenly move of all, considering everything.
