Talk us through Rhaenys’ last stand in episode four. There are a few near-misses, and she does have chances to fly away and regroup — yet she doesn’t.
I think she knows that it’s going to be “suicide” throughout, really . . . The first part of that battle, it feels like she’s just got away with it. Going back in is almost 100 per cent a kamikaze move, but it’s the opportunity to end [the war] there and then — and if that means sacrificing herself, then so be it.

Can you compare that to the scene at the end of season one, when Rhaenys rises up on her dragon and has Alicent in her sights, but chooses not to kill her?
No, I think that was a different moment; I know that everybody wants to equate them. The fact is, in that moment, she did the right thing. It was not her war to begin. She chose not to start, effectively, a nuclear war. The choice to not press the “red button” is very evidently the superior choice . . . Everyone’s going to want to say she’s righting her decision not to act [last season] — but I don’t think that’s the case.
Looking at her series-long arc, how is Rhaenys’ death emblematic of her life?
Well, it is that. She swallowed the appalling injustice of being passed over [for the crown] as a woman — repressed and sidelined and ignored. And then the unspeakable horror of the loss of her children, and the abandonment by her husband — loss after loss. She just holds everything together. It felt like an increasing build-up of pressure. And then in the moment at the end of episode nine last season, she breaks her own glass ceiling, as it were, and just says, “F*** you all,” and takes herself to a different level — literally rises above everything on that dragon.

In season two, she’s already at a different level than everybody else. All of them, in season two, just felt like insufferably spoiled children, scrabbling around on the ground like ants for little pieces of food. And because of what happened at the end of season one, she’s got the bigger picture; where we start, she’s the only one who’s actually doing anything. She’s the one who’s holding everybody else together . . . And increasingly, it just felt like she was letting go and letting go and letting go. So then, finally, when she does come to the battle and the final moments with [her dragon] Meleys, it’s a literal, physical letting go — but also an emotional, spiritual letting go. It felt like she was becoming increasingly light. Very often people, as they’re approaching their own final moments, it’s like they’re shedding the world. All the minutiae and the stupid mess and muddle of our earthly existence becomes irrelevant.

What was it like actually filming that final, fatal dragon battle?
You want it to be a perfect moment in time, but in the end the practicalities take over. It was the end of a two-week process of being on the back of that dragon every day. It was quite a complicated set-up, so I had this long build-up. And I thought, “We’re probably going to do it several times.” We did two takes and that was it. I was like, “Oh, no, no, we must take more time!” But that’s exactly the reality of the thing — it’s over in a flash, and there’s no time to indulge in it . . .
All told, what do you think people will remember most about Rhaenys?
That she was a sassy, badass, cool woman. A samurai. A mother. The epitome of feminine grace, leadership, strength, wisdom, courage and . . . rock-hard coolness [laughs].
House of the Dragon airs Sunday, July 21 on HBO Canada
MEMORABLE ROLES:
A twice Tony-nominated stage actress, Ms. Best is known to TV and film audiences for playing Dr. Eleanor O’Hara across five seasons of Nurse Jackie, as well as notorious Windsor rabble-rouser Wallis Simpson in The King’s Speech.
CURRENT GIG:
Since 2022, the London-born thesp has starred in HBO’s smash-hit Game of Thrones prequel as wise-yet-ferocious dragonrider Rhaenys Targaryen — a.k.a. “The Queen Who Never Was.” Allying herself and her trusty reptilian steed Meleys to Princess Rhaenyra and Team Black in the Targaryen civil war, Rhaenys recently perished in what’s been anointed by many as the show’s most spectacular episode yet. TV Week got to chat with the actress about saying goodbye in a literal blaze of glory.