Facing up to

MILLY ALCOCK REFLECTS ON HOUSE OF THE DRAGON AND RETURNING TO UPRIGHT

It’s not too hard to understand why Milly Alcock might be a little tired of the sight of herself. As one of the lead roles in arguably the most eagerly anticipated TV show of year, the Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, the rising Aussie star was front and centre in its extensive hype campaign, with her face splashed over billboards and buses around the world, as well as magazines, TV and online ads.

“I didn’t actually ever see any billboards, which I thought was quite funny,” she says from her adopted home in London. “It was like the world was protecting me from seeing it all. But it’s weird. I am so sick of my face – I am so sick of it. It’s inescapable. As an actor the whole point of your job is to escape yourself and then you are faced with it as a repercussion of doing your work. You are kind of stuck with yourself. It’s been a very strange experience.”

That being the case, it’s probably just as well that Alcock is firmly ensconced on the other side of the world, given that her distinctive visage is once again adorning billboards around Australia alongside that of Tim Minchin, her co-star in the second season of Upright.

The 2019 first season of the road-trip comedy-drama, which was co-written by Minchin, was a big part of the reason she was cast as the young Princess Rhaenyra in the fantasy drama hit. Her role as feisty, but vulnerable, teenage runaway Meg, who latches on to Minchin’s wannabe rock star Lucky on a trip through the barren interior of Australia as he tries to return an upright piano to his dying mother in Perth, earned her critical acclaim here and overseas, as well as an AACTA nomination in 2020 in the Best Comedy Performer category.

“Yes, definitely,” she agrees. “Upright gave me such a big body of work and I am eternally grateful for it and it did open me up to be seen by a multitude of different people and to be able to access such a beautiful range because of the writing,” she says.

So, being able to return to Meg as her first job after she aged out of her House of the Dragon role (she was replaced by Emma Darcy as Rhaenyra half way through the season) was “a full circle moment” for her and one she never really expected.

“I thought that season one was wrapped up so beautifully that it didn’t need any more of it to be told,” she says.

“But I got the pleasure of getting back to revisit her and see how she surprised me and who she became.”

This time, several years have passed and it’s Meg who is on a family quest, reconnecting with Lucky (now a famous musician) for a trip to the jungle of Queensland to find her long-lost mother. For Alcock, who says she was “extremely burnt out” after working solidly for a year and half, returning to the familiar sights and smells of Australia – as well as seeing family and friends and reconnecting with Minchin – was a joy.

Although floods put paid to plans to shoot in Far North Queensland, the Gold Coast proved to be a more than suitable backdrop for another journey filled with weird and wonderful characters encountered along the way.

“I thought I could see elements of the first season, I thought it had beautiful pacing and weird and wonderful little characters,” says Alcock. “I thought that it really wrapped up all the unknown questions that we were left with in season one.

“She (Meg) is trying to get all these answers to all these questions and trying to get some sort of closure within herself and her life so she can move on and grow up.”

Alcock says she’s still trying to find her “new normal” after House of the Dragon but she knows the global profile it has given her means that her life will never be the same again.

“It was and still is genuinely life-changing and I am still adjusting and it’s all very strange,” she says. “But there’s also this element of ‘this is probably all going to be temporary and it will die down’.”

Family and friends – and a refusal to take herself too seriously in the whirlwind of red carpets, premieres, magazine shoots and next-big-thing lists – have kept her head firmly on her shoulders and her feet on that ground.

“I know I am not all that,” she says with a laugh, “and you just can’t buy into it I guess, so I haven’t been believing it. I am in a bit of denial.”

And while she wasn’t a fan of watching her own episodes of House of the Dragon, she watched the rest of the season with fascination, as Darcy’s Rhaenyra squared off with Olivia Cook’s Alicent Hightower after the death of King Viserys (Paddy Considine) to set up season two.

“I’m Team Rhaenyra – duh,” she says. “I think everyone is so sensational in it. Em and Liv are amazing and Paddy Considine, it seems it’s only now the world is figuring out how incredible he is and how he has been since before I was born.”

Alcock says that the most valuable lesson she learned from working with veteran actors of the calibre of Considine, Matt Smith and Rhys Ifans is how to treat people on set – and how and when to pick her battles.

“And I don’t just mean ‘don’t be a dick’ – obviously,” she says. “I mean more the way the older or more established actors would approach their work to the creative team and the other actors in the room. They were really open to ideas and to criticism, but also to know when to fight for a choice that they had made. Knowing when to be bold and when to be brave and when to say ‘no, this is what I think’. “It’s so easy as a young actor, and especially a young woman, to always say yes and not know when to fight and to have a voice or an opinion.” She’s also grateful for the freedom the role has given her to pick future projects. She says she has nothing lined up at the moment, but she’s adamant that whatever comes next won’t involve corsets, dragons or magic. “I’m not doing any fantasy roles,” she says. “I don’t want to do anything like that. I have done it and I don’t need to do it again. I am just kind of waiting for the right project.

“I am not in a rush to jump on something. I would rather work not a lot and do work that I am really proud of and passionate about. When you sign on to a project you have to get used to talking about it for six months or a year of your life, so you want to make sure you really adore it and I am waiting for that project to come along and surprise me.” Upright Season 2, November 15, 8.30pm,

Fox Showcase and On Demand.