House of the Dragon season two: Dragons, Grief and Family Feuds

House of the Dragon was one of the few US productions that continued to shoot during last year’s Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes.

For almost three months in 2023, industry writers and actors walked out in a dispute over fair pay and the use of artificial intelligence in the indsutry.

But the House of the Dragon cast did not take part because the show was mainly filmed in the UK under contracts overseen by British union Equity, rather than its striking US counterpart the Screen Actors Guild (SAG).

The show’s writer Ryan Condal told the BBC it was a “fraught period”, but a “great privilege” to keep the cast and crew employed.

“There was lots of labour strife,” he said. “We were lucky all of our scripts were done and we were already in production when when the writers’ strike happened.

“The thing I was happy about was keeping our crew of 2,500 people employed. It was a very fraught time, and a lot of people went through really tough times, so just the fact that our crew could keep working was a real privilege.”

Olivia Cooke said the strikes period was “strange”.

“It felt weird. It felt wonky,” she said.

“A bunch of us are members of SAG, but we were under a different union. We sort of had to continue to work, otherwise we’d all get sued.

“We didn’t feel good, but we were also aware that we were really lucky to be still shooting because a lot of cast and crew really relied on this job. It was really multifaceted and strange.”