House of the Dragon star Olivia Cooke addresses the show's backlash: "Some of the fans have been ****ing horrible to our cast"

House of the Dragon star Olivia Cooke has called out fan backlash after revealing that the cast of the Game of Thrones spin-off has received "hate-filled" comments.

"They’ll take a picture, and then they’ll be like: ‘We HATE your character!’ Sometimes people do say that with a lot of malice," Cooke, who plays Alicent Hightower on the HBO series, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Going beyond that, other cast members have dealt with acidic social media comments, while the show as a whole was bitterly decried by some fans after what they perceived to be a lackluster second season packed with filler and a lack of narrative momentum.

“Some of the fans have been fucking horrible to our cast," Cooke said, though it was unclear if she had a specific example in mind. "It makes me really angry that we’re then supposed to just bow down and [pay] obeisance to these people that only want to say the most debased, hate-filled things. But thankfully, we’ve all experienced it in our own way, and we’ve got each other, which doesn’t make it right."

Despite fan interactions seemingly casting a dark cloud over the Westeros-set show, House of the Dragon continues to rumble on. A third season is in the works, with Cooke revealing in a separate interview with Collider that it will kick off with a "bang", a perfect counter-point to those disappointed by last year's more low-key finale.

"The first two [episodes] were essentially supposed to be our finale last year. So you can just imagine coming into that sort of energy. It's bigger and more ferocious than ever before."

House of the Dragon season 3 is currently undated. For more, check out the new TV shows heading our way very soon.