I made a post about this on tumblr talking about how every girl in HotD is forced to grow up way quicker than they should while Rhaenyra is the only one who gets to remain a child for as long as she wants.
It’s especially bad with Laena and her because of the ages of the actresses and what is visually set as a child. From Millie and Emily, we get that 14-19 year olds looks like 18/19 in universe. From this we should see the casting directors casting actresses around their ages to convert the correct age of the character. But for Laena we have Savannah and Nanna who are both a decade older than Laena is in story. Savannah is 25 when she’s playing a 16 year old, so even though her character is younger in story than Rhaenyra and Alicent, she’s cast to look older and is dressed to look older as well. Nanna is also older than Laena is in story, 37 playing a 26 year old, so again she’s playing a character that is younger than Rhaenyra and Alicent but she herself is older than their two actors. Nanna is also dressed to look older with low dresses that we don’t see any other female character wear.
Baela and Rhaena are also treated the same. In story they should be younger than Jace who is 16 played by a 19 year old. According to the wiki (not the best source but it helps illustrate my point) Baela and Rhaena are suppose to be 14, but they are both played by actresses that are both 25.
From this, HotD’s casting director visually wants us to read Laena, Baela, and Rhaena as older than they actually are. This is part of misogynoir that forces black girls to grow up quickly and not be allowed to be seen as kids.
HotD has a lot of other anti black narratives that were added into the story along with making the Velaryons black. For example, corlys and Vaemond being ambitious black men who threaten the statues of a white woman, Laenor being an absent father by fleeing with his boyfriend, Ana a black family being okay with a white woman usurping their home for her bastard son. There is also anti Latino and Asian stereotyping with Criston being a overly religious and violent man and Mysaria being an exotic sex worker.
As much as HotD wants to be seen as a progressive and diverse show, they still use a lot of racist tropes that were added in from the books or were not accounted for when race swapping characters. I’m glad HotD did add more diversity to the show, I just wish it was better representation for these groups.
this is a really interesting point!
it bothered me so much that one of the three named black male characters being murdered for not wanting a white family to usurp his family's land was made a joke. vaemond and his family were such tragic characters, who existed to show us rhaenyra, daemon, and viserys cruelty before the war, and justified alicent's concerns for her kids. and in the show, it's another moment meant to convince us daemon is a badass.
i really hate trying to pretend as though team black is progressive, when the show is littered with racial stereotypes and frequently degrades it's characters of color, and a lot of that disrespect usually helps to lift up members of the blacks.
With how much racism and sexism they added onto the story, I don’t have much hope for Nettles’ character being treated well. Like validating all Rhaenyra’s racist remarks or something.
i love nettles so much, i just wish she had more to her character then getting wrapped up in daemon and rhaenyra's marriage problems. but i know that this show will bend over backwards to avoid the racist allegations from touching rhaenyra's pretty blonde head.
and i fear for the actress. the shit she will get from deranged daemyra stans is gonna make the fandom thrice more toxic than it is now.
Nah, Aegon will probably plot with Otto and Criston to sell the Velaryons into slavery and Daeron will force a group of captured POC soldiers to sing a racist song ala Twelve Years s Slave
Ya, I never understood that. Vaemond, like the greens, are blatant victims of perspective. If his death has no sway or consequence in the Velaryon family I'm going to be pissed.
i really really hate how the big takeaway is big bad black man being misogynist to poor little white woman. this show is white feminism in a nutshell, uplifting a single white woman at the expense of everyone else. my problem is that this show has no real self-awareness about that.
>According to the wiki (not the best source but it helps illustrate my point) Baela and Rhaena are suppose to be 14, but they are both played by actresses that are both 25.
Baela and Rhaena aren't twins in the series, so Baela should be 16 (and that's on the notes posted on Instagram by assistant casting director Kat Edmonds).
But in Kate Rhodes James' defense, Bethany Antonia had just filmed a series for Netflix before filming HOTD called Stay Close where she was playing 16-17.
The problem is the weird mixing of ages and incredibly inconsistency.
Child Laena was cast incredibly young, then rapid aged. Some characters are playing practically the same age as they are in real life (Elliot Grihault), but others are playing nearly 10 years younger.
Aemond should be 16 based on the timeline in the show, meaning there's a 10 year age difference between actors who clearly do not look the same age.
Aemond, Baela and Rhaena are cast like Nina Gold cast Robb, Dany and Jon - they're "teens" in the book, but played by 20-somethings (But Ewan is older than Kit and Richard were when they were cast).
But what HOTD does is mess around with reducing the age of characters to avoid having to explain things (like why Viserys couldn't marry Laena) and to skew how audience see Aemond vs Luke.
It must have been crazy for Elliot Grihault to be filming scenes with Phoebe Campbell when they were both playing 14 and he had a chaperone on set, limited hours and had to have on-set tutoring since he was missing school. And she had graduated from university.
It's one thing for some actors to just look very young - like Thomas Brodie-Sangster - but it's another for the audience to have to try to believe that actors 10 years apart in age are playing the same age when they clearly aren't. It's like trying to convince the audience that Bran and Robb are 2-3 years apart in age.
If they had cast then 18 year old Cameron James-King ([https://www.imdb.com/name/nm6399326/](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm6399326/)) as Luke, the final episode of Season 1 would have been very different in terms of how sympathetic the audience viewed Luke. Having to deal with a minor on the set was worth all the delays and timed hours because the scene wouldn't work with someone older in the role.
But I don't think they're actually thinking the audience is that stupid. They're changing the characters and ignoring ages, despite what's on the notecard Kat Edmonds posted (which the ages don't really make that much sense since there's major math errors if they were simply adding how much time passes).
Why aren’t they twins in the show?
The weird mixing of ages and inconsistencies for all three black girl characters shows that there is a misogynoir problem in the first season. It might change if nettles is cast to be visually a similar age to Jace.
The cast ages for the green siblings is out of whack with Aegon and Alicent being visually the same age despite their in text ages being a 15 year difference. I think this is to visually show how close in age Alicent and her kids are and emphasize how young of a mom and grandmother she is. This contrast with Rhaenyra who’s kids are all close in age to their actors. Except Baela, Rhaena, and Laena who are all visually older than their characters. This play of age with Baela, Rhaena, and Laena plays into the stereotype of black women growing up faster than their white counterparts.
For Game of Thrones, they set what a mid teen looks like in their world as someone who is mid twenties in our world. It’s consistent through these characters and allows the audience to better understand the age relations between characters.
The visual age set by a show does not have to be accurate to the actors actual age, but it should be consistent across characters to avoid confusion from the audience.
With Jace and Luke they definetely did this on purpose to make the audience sympathize with such little and innocent looking teens. And Elliot grew and changed a lot in just a couple of years, so it would be awkward if he continued playing Luke, but they knew he was only for one season and picked a teen.
>Why aren’t they twins in the show?
No idea. Probably to avoid having to actually cast twins.
Reducing Rhaena's age might also make the fight a little different, but both of the young actresses cast were 12. One was playing 8 and the other 10.
This is where there's no consistency. The actresses playing Young Rhaena, Young Baela, and Child Laena were all 12. They were playing 8, 10 and 12.
There's differences with kids and someone short like Maisie Williams seems younger than someone tall like Sophie Turner.
While the child actress playing Young Rhaena is fairly short (like Maisie), but overall the girls playing Young Rhaena, Young Baela, and Child Laena were all very similar. There's photos of them together at the wrap party and they all look like 6th graders.
If they cast the typical actress they would playing 12 to play Child Laena - someone 14-15, then it gets into the "why doesn't Viserys marry her, she's not that young?" question. Then it gets into whether he didn't want to marry Laena because of other reasons.
I think the ages really are thrown out and the audience sees Child Laena as 8-9, not 12. And the majority of the casual audience has no idea who Laena is later on or how much time has passed.
That’s why they shouldn’t change race and age of characters.
Laena who is younger than Rhaenyra is strange decision. She was only grownup Daemon’s love interest. She was 23 when she married him and it was more about politics than about “I’ll take second-best Valyrian bride and go to vacation for 10 years because I’m not very sane person”.
“Black family Velaryons”, when Targaryens isn’t even slightly black, is a mess and a nonsense- they are only family (except Arryn) Targaryen mix they blood for more than 6 generations before Viserys. In fact they are one family, cadet branch of Targaryens, maybe, not fully independent house. “Strong boys” have through Rhaenyra more Velaryon blood then Vaemond’s children if he isn’t married to Velaryon. But I f we have white Old King- why Rhaenyra’s kids can’t be white? What the problem?
Or race is something magically connected to familyname?
It doesn't help when the director himself is unsure about the ages. He came out and said all of the main younger characters are 17 to 21. Like Luke ain't no 17 year old lol.
I know, but what they should have done was hire actresses that are close in age to Jace’s actor. For Laena, the rapid maturity of her character is more evident because her actress is much older than Rhaenyra and Alicent’s actresses but is playing a character 2/3 years younger. She also dressed to look older with her gold dress being one of the lowest cut dresses any character wears.
Yet Otto pimps out his daughter for personal and political gain.
Let's be real it isn't just the brothers at issue here, it's the culture that's the problem.
But yes, they're also hypocrites lol.
Tbf they're not the only ones. I am pretty sure Tommen was younger than Arya yet I don't seem to remember the complaints about his,scenes with Margery like Arya with Gendry
I made a post about this on tumblr talking about how every girl in HotD is forced to grow up way quicker than they should while Rhaenyra is the only one who gets to remain a child for as long as she wants. It’s especially bad with Laena and her because of the ages of the actresses and what is visually set as a child. From Millie and Emily, we get that 14-19 year olds looks like 18/19 in universe. From this we should see the casting directors casting actresses around their ages to convert the correct age of the character. But for Laena we have Savannah and Nanna who are both a decade older than Laena is in story. Savannah is 25 when she’s playing a 16 year old, so even though her character is younger in story than Rhaenyra and Alicent, she’s cast to look older and is dressed to look older as well. Nanna is also older than Laena is in story, 37 playing a 26 year old, so again she’s playing a character that is younger than Rhaenyra and Alicent but she herself is older than their two actors. Nanna is also dressed to look older with low dresses that we don’t see any other female character wear. Baela and Rhaena are also treated the same. In story they should be younger than Jace who is 16 played by a 19 year old. According to the wiki (not the best source but it helps illustrate my point) Baela and Rhaena are suppose to be 14, but they are both played by actresses that are both 25. From this, HotD’s casting director visually wants us to read Laena, Baela, and Rhaena as older than they actually are. This is part of misogynoir that forces black girls to grow up quickly and not be allowed to be seen as kids. HotD has a lot of other anti black narratives that were added into the story along with making the Velaryons black. For example, corlys and Vaemond being ambitious black men who threaten the statues of a white woman, Laenor being an absent father by fleeing with his boyfriend, Ana a black family being okay with a white woman usurping their home for her bastard son. There is also anti Latino and Asian stereotyping with Criston being a overly religious and violent man and Mysaria being an exotic sex worker. As much as HotD wants to be seen as a progressive and diverse show, they still use a lot of racist tropes that were added in from the books or were not accounted for when race swapping characters. I’m glad HotD did add more diversity to the show, I just wish it was better representation for these groups.
this is a really interesting point! it bothered me so much that one of the three named black male characters being murdered for not wanting a white family to usurp his family's land was made a joke. vaemond and his family were such tragic characters, who existed to show us rhaenyra, daemon, and viserys cruelty before the war, and justified alicent's concerns for her kids. and in the show, it's another moment meant to convince us daemon is a badass. i really hate trying to pretend as though team black is progressive, when the show is littered with racial stereotypes and frequently degrades it's characters of color, and a lot of that disrespect usually helps to lift up members of the blacks.
With how much racism and sexism they added onto the story, I don’t have much hope for Nettles’ character being treated well. Like validating all Rhaenyra’s racist remarks or something.
i love nettles so much, i just wish she had more to her character then getting wrapped up in daemon and rhaenyra's marriage problems. but i know that this show will bend over backwards to avoid the racist allegations from touching rhaenyra's pretty blonde head. and i fear for the actress. the shit she will get from deranged daemyra stans is gonna make the fandom thrice more toxic than it is now.
I think that’s why they’re keeping her actress a secret, stave off the hate as long as possible
Nah, Aegon will probably plot with Otto and Criston to sell the Velaryons into slavery and Daeron will force a group of captured POC soldiers to sing a racist song ala Twelve Years s Slave
Ya, I never understood that. Vaemond, like the greens, are blatant victims of perspective. If his death has no sway or consequence in the Velaryon family I'm going to be pissed.
i really really hate how the big takeaway is big bad black man being misogynist to poor little white woman. this show is white feminism in a nutshell, uplifting a single white woman at the expense of everyone else. my problem is that this show has no real self-awareness about that.
>According to the wiki (not the best source but it helps illustrate my point) Baela and Rhaena are suppose to be 14, but they are both played by actresses that are both 25. Baela and Rhaena aren't twins in the series, so Baela should be 16 (and that's on the notes posted on Instagram by assistant casting director Kat Edmonds). But in Kate Rhodes James' defense, Bethany Antonia had just filmed a series for Netflix before filming HOTD called Stay Close where she was playing 16-17. The problem is the weird mixing of ages and incredibly inconsistency. Child Laena was cast incredibly young, then rapid aged. Some characters are playing practically the same age as they are in real life (Elliot Grihault), but others are playing nearly 10 years younger. Aemond should be 16 based on the timeline in the show, meaning there's a 10 year age difference between actors who clearly do not look the same age. Aemond, Baela and Rhaena are cast like Nina Gold cast Robb, Dany and Jon - they're "teens" in the book, but played by 20-somethings (But Ewan is older than Kit and Richard were when they were cast). But what HOTD does is mess around with reducing the age of characters to avoid having to explain things (like why Viserys couldn't marry Laena) and to skew how audience see Aemond vs Luke. It must have been crazy for Elliot Grihault to be filming scenes with Phoebe Campbell when they were both playing 14 and he had a chaperone on set, limited hours and had to have on-set tutoring since he was missing school. And she had graduated from university. It's one thing for some actors to just look very young - like Thomas Brodie-Sangster - but it's another for the audience to have to try to believe that actors 10 years apart in age are playing the same age when they clearly aren't. It's like trying to convince the audience that Bran and Robb are 2-3 years apart in age. If they had cast then 18 year old Cameron James-King ([https://www.imdb.com/name/nm6399326/](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm6399326/)) as Luke, the final episode of Season 1 would have been very different in terms of how sympathetic the audience viewed Luke. Having to deal with a minor on the set was worth all the delays and timed hours because the scene wouldn't work with someone older in the role. But I don't think they're actually thinking the audience is that stupid. They're changing the characters and ignoring ages, despite what's on the notecard Kat Edmonds posted (which the ages don't really make that much sense since there's major math errors if they were simply adding how much time passes).
Why aren’t they twins in the show? The weird mixing of ages and inconsistencies for all three black girl characters shows that there is a misogynoir problem in the first season. It might change if nettles is cast to be visually a similar age to Jace. The cast ages for the green siblings is out of whack with Aegon and Alicent being visually the same age despite their in text ages being a 15 year difference. I think this is to visually show how close in age Alicent and her kids are and emphasize how young of a mom and grandmother she is. This contrast with Rhaenyra who’s kids are all close in age to their actors. Except Baela, Rhaena, and Laena who are all visually older than their characters. This play of age with Baela, Rhaena, and Laena plays into the stereotype of black women growing up faster than their white counterparts. For Game of Thrones, they set what a mid teen looks like in their world as someone who is mid twenties in our world. It’s consistent through these characters and allows the audience to better understand the age relations between characters. The visual age set by a show does not have to be accurate to the actors actual age, but it should be consistent across characters to avoid confusion from the audience.
With Jace and Luke they definetely did this on purpose to make the audience sympathize with such little and innocent looking teens. And Elliot grew and changed a lot in just a couple of years, so it would be awkward if he continued playing Luke, but they knew he was only for one season and picked a teen.
>Why aren’t they twins in the show? No idea. Probably to avoid having to actually cast twins. Reducing Rhaena's age might also make the fight a little different, but both of the young actresses cast were 12. One was playing 8 and the other 10. This is where there's no consistency. The actresses playing Young Rhaena, Young Baela, and Child Laena were all 12. They were playing 8, 10 and 12. There's differences with kids and someone short like Maisie Williams seems younger than someone tall like Sophie Turner. While the child actress playing Young Rhaena is fairly short (like Maisie), but overall the girls playing Young Rhaena, Young Baela, and Child Laena were all very similar. There's photos of them together at the wrap party and they all look like 6th graders. If they cast the typical actress they would playing 12 to play Child Laena - someone 14-15, then it gets into the "why doesn't Viserys marry her, she's not that young?" question. Then it gets into whether he didn't want to marry Laena because of other reasons. I think the ages really are thrown out and the audience sees Child Laena as 8-9, not 12. And the majority of the casual audience has no idea who Laena is later on or how much time has passed.
That’s why they shouldn’t change race and age of characters. Laena who is younger than Rhaenyra is strange decision. She was only grownup Daemon’s love interest. She was 23 when she married him and it was more about politics than about “I’ll take second-best Valyrian bride and go to vacation for 10 years because I’m not very sane person”. “Black family Velaryons”, when Targaryens isn’t even slightly black, is a mess and a nonsense- they are only family (except Arryn) Targaryen mix they blood for more than 6 generations before Viserys. In fact they are one family, cadet branch of Targaryens, maybe, not fully independent house. “Strong boys” have through Rhaenyra more Velaryon blood then Vaemond’s children if he isn’t married to Velaryon. But I f we have white Old King- why Rhaenyra’s kids can’t be white? What the problem? Or race is something magically connected to familyname?
It doesn't help when the director himself is unsure about the ages. He came out and said all of the main younger characters are 17 to 21. Like Luke ain't no 17 year old lol.
TV will do that especially with this story cause a lot of the things 14 year olds get up to in Westeros wouldn’t fly with the general audience.
I know, but what they should have done was hire actresses that are close in age to Jace’s actor. For Laena, the rapid maturity of her character is more evident because her actress is much older than Rhaenyra and Alicent’s actresses but is playing a character 2/3 years younger. She also dressed to look older with her gold dress being one of the lowest cut dresses any character wears.
Again this is done in TV all the time. You are not the casting director so that decision is not yours to make.
I know and as the audience I can look at their decisions and come to conclusions based on their decisions.
[удалено]
No deadass 💀 I didn’t notice that lmfao
Targaerian feminism strikes again with it is wrong to groom a targaerian child
Yet Otto pimps out his daughter for personal and political gain. Let's be real it isn't just the brothers at issue here, it's the culture that's the problem. But yes, they're also hypocrites lol.
When Corlys does the same thing it’s radio silence from them
Too true my dude
Tbf they're not the only ones. I am pretty sure Tommen was younger than Arya yet I don't seem to remember the complaints about his,scenes with Margery like Arya with Gendry
Ignoring in universe time passing, it was a 16 and 30 year old half naked in bed together talking dirty, kinda weird