Meet the House of the Dragon Newcomer Who Just Took Down a Fan Favorite

Spoilers below.

In the latest episode of House of the Dragon, Annie Shapero’s Alysanne Blackwood only appears for a few seconds, but she makes the most of her screen time. As a battle unfolds in the forest between her army, which supports Queen Rhaenyra, and the supporters of usurper King Aegon, Alysanne stays hidden in the brush. But when the fighting halts, she launches three arrows from her bow right through opposition leader Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel), killing him on the spot. The camera pans to her peering out of the foliage, black war paint smudged across her eyes. Who is she?

The kill is a shocking farewell to Cole, a complicated character who’d been on the show since season 1, but it’s also a bold introduction to Alysanne. Though Shapero appeared in ensemble moments earlier this season, this is her biggest scene yet, and it’s only a taste of what’s to come. George R. R. Martin fans who’ve read the show’s source material, Fire & Blood, know that there’s more to Alysanne, a.k.a. “Black Aly”: She’s a fierce warrior and archer and, eventually, the wife of Cregan Stark and Lady of Winterfell. When Deadline first reported Shapero’s casting last July, it called her role “a legendary figure in House Stark lore.”

Though HBO hasn’t confirmed how much of her story will be in House of the Dragon—Cregan (Tom Taylor) was introduced in season 2, by the way—her silent but deadly moment adds weight to her role. Speaking from her home in London, Shapero hints that her performance as Alysanne is “very physical, which you’ll see more as the season progresses.”

Shapero has appeared in Prime Video’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North and the horror indie Saccharine, but she seemed to be preparing for Alysanne her whole life. Her audition and callback involved archery and riding a horse; luckily, she did the former at school and trained in the latter for two years. “My mom used to drive me to stables every Sunday to do horse riding in the countryside,” the Melbourne, Australia-raised actress says. But still, it was “surreal” to learn she got the part. “I was just in shock and then I was very, very excited,” Shapero recalls. Already a fan of House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones, she dove into research by listening to Fire & Blood on Audible.

Shapero didn’t always want to become an actress; she studied dance professionally for years and even became a dance teacher. “But the aspect of dance that I always loved was the narrative storytelling side of it,” she says. She had a “weird guttural instinct” to try acting, so she followed it and went to drama school. When she continued to stick to it through Melbourne’s three-year COVID lockdown, “it was a pretty sure sign that you really do enjoy the job,” she says.

Here, Shapero chats with ELLE about her mysterious House of the Dragon role and where you’ll see her next.

What did you know about your role when you auditioned?

Like any big project, they kind of give you a fake [title]…but I knew that it was for this show. But I didn’t know who I was auditioning for. The character in the audition was quite rough and tumble. She was picking stuff out of her teeth. She was just really jovial and kind of messy. That’s kind of all I had to go off and it wasn’t until I actually booked it that I found out it would be Alysanne Blackwood, which was really, really cool.

So how did you channel the character based on those details?

It’s so funny. I decided to drink an alcohol-free beer in the tape. That tonally felt like something the character would do because it was post-battle. The “Fishfeed” song [in episode 2] wasn’t the exact audition scene, but that was the realm in which the audition material sat in.…In order to get the audition, I had to send in footage of me doing archery. And I was like, “Okay, great. Let’s bring in those high school days.”

So you’ve done it before?

Yeah, I’d done it before in school, but then I ended up booking a private lesson with a guy from Melbourne who’s in his eighties who teaches at this local park. So I went and did a lesson with him, got the archery footage, and then did the audition self-tape.

The process after that was finding out that I got a callback. But the issue was at the time, I was still in Melbourne. I’d planned to move to London a month after I actually booked the job, which was crazy, serendipitous timing. But preparing for the callback, I called up my mom’s neighbor down in the countryside, did a quick horse-riding recap, hopped on the plane the next day, and then got my bum to the U.K.

What did you want to add to Alysanne and what parts of the text did you or the writing team want to stay faithful to?

I feel that what we stayed the most faithful to was her interconnectedness to the world around her. She’s a believer in the old gods. She’s deeply connected to nature. That’s kind of her philosophy or her belief system, that everything is connected and interconnected.

But I guess the thing that I wanted to play with more when I was on set was her ruggedness. Because while that’s in the books, I think getting a visceral quality to it and the way she speaks, the tone with which she speaks, the way she moves, the way she holds herself in rooms surrounded by men was a really interesting and fun layer to add onto the information that I’d already learned about her from the source material and the script.

Her look is super interesting, with the eye shadow. Do you know how the makeup team came to that and what did it feel like when you saw the whole look put together?

I just kept calling her such a badass. I was saying to Amanda [Knight] and Ros [Rosalia Culora] when I went in for my initial hair and makeup fitting that I felt like she’s going to be the coolest character I’ll possibly ever play.… Even with the war paint, Amanda came up with this rubber dust. So even the detail of the war paint that you’re seeing across her eyes is layered. And then all of the braids that kind of mirror what you hear about in the books, but they’ve gone for a much more masculine, androgynous kind of look with her whole styling was just really liberating to play, especially as a woman, because it meant that no part of my psyche as an actor or the psyche as the character lent into beauty in any way, shape, or form. It was very liberating.

When did you learn that you were going to kill Criston Cole?

In the script. I had received the episode or the parts that I was in and I didn’t know that I’d be doing that until I read it. I remember I was going through it on the way to one of the horse training sessions and I think I audibly gasped when I read it. I’m not even kidding….It was such a gift to be able to step onto battle scenes just throughout the series, but also as the only female in that realm. [To] be given the task of taking out a man who has been incredibly hard to take down was pretty exhilarating.

Did you talk to Fabien about it at all?

No. It was so funny, because that was the only day that we’d crossed over on set. I just remember sitting in the makeup trailer and we said hello, just had a very brief chat, because obviously he’s about to enter a massive, huge, momentous day as a character, but as an actor. So I wanted to leave a bit of space, but I also think I just didn’t want to add salt to the wound.

Like, “I know we just met, but I’m about to take you down.”

Did you have any conversations with showrunner Ryan Condal or anybody from the team about where Alysanne goes from here?

They keep it all under wraps. She does eventually in the books become Lady of Winterfell, but it all just depends on what the writers and Ryan decide. I do believe that she will be in the fourth season. But in terms of the ways in which they choose to show her in amongst the story as a whole, I’m curious and excited to find out.

What can we look out for from Alysanne in the future episodes, generally speaking?

Without giving anything away… You really get to see her skill set, because she’s known as such a master warrior and archer and has such a connection to horses. You’ll get to see that whole skill set that she’s really known for in the coming episodes.

You’re also going to be in The Boys spinoff Vought Rising. It’s funny that you’re entering these huge worlds, that you’re adding something new into these established, fan-beloved worlds. So what was entering that project like for you?

2025 was the year of the prequel for me in the best way. But yeah, I was shooting both at the same time. I was flying back and forth between London and Toronto since August.

You think that it’s going to be really intense, but actually they’re such different projects and the characters are so wildly different too, that there was just such an excitability around having the opportunity to not just work on a project, but actually two projects at the same time that both come from such well-known, well-thought-out worlds that have such huge fan bases. I’m super excited for Vought Rising to come out.

When this House of the Dragon episode drops on Sunday, what do you hope people take away from Alysanne? Is there anything that you wanted to convey in that scene specifically?

I think there’s a real beauty in how understated the scene is. There’s a real strength to that as well, because her character never feels the need to be the loudest one in the room. Even reading the books will give you a lot of information on that. She’s a very grounded individual.

There was something so clever about having her come in for the killing shot in a way that was just so “get the job done” and that she was trusted with something like that. I hope that the audience feels that. It’s just a clean swipe.

It’s also a really devastating motif as well when you look at how Jace died. They’ve mirrored it beautifully. I feel that there’s something really strong about the simplicity of that scene that I hope impacts the audience in a very grounded way, because there’s no fanfare around it, which is also her character. She’s just direct and to the point and always does what she feels is best.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.