“I like shapeshifting,” says a grinning Ewan Mitchell, who, fresh from playing Saltburn’s eerie, bespectacled mathematician Michael Gavey, is now ready to return as House of the Dragon’s icy blond villain Aemond Targaryen. “He hijacks the show and turns it into a horror film,” the 27-year-old tells me of what to expect from the second season of the outrageously successful Game of Thrones prequel. For the uninitiated: the first ended with Aemond riding a fire-breathing beast that devoured his nephew in a single gulp. “You’re gonna see the repercussions of that—and you’ll see another side to Aemond.”
There’s a reason Mitchell has become the show’s bewitching breakout star, the subject of countless internet think pieces and fan adoration: “I’ve never seen Thrones,” Mitchell admits. “I avoided it. I wanted to create something fresh.” To do so, he employs “a bespoke method,” combining unexpected references—“Kirk Douglas in The Vikings; Michael Fassbender in Prometheus”—and staying in the right mindset during filming by listening to Metallica, Slipknot, and Killswitch Engage “to get the blood pumping.”
Mitchell can, when he chooses, be as chameleonic off-screen, equally at home in the Raf Simons jacket and elbow-length latex gloves he chose for British Vogue’s Fashion Film Party earlier this year as he is in the Versace tailoring he sported on set or the low-key black hoodie, blue jeans, and Adidas trainers he wears today. “I’m just up for trying different things that challenge me.”
That’s always been the way. Growing up in a suburb of Derby, England, where he still lives, Mitchell was laughed out of the classroom when he said he wanted to be an actor. Still, without any formal training, he secured a place at Nottingham’s prestigious the Television Workshop and eventually landed a role in the ITV period drama The Halcyon, which led to a part in sci-fi thriller High Life with Robert Pattinson, before HBO and Emerald Fennell came knocking.
When not working, he can be found camping in the Peak District, though when duty calls, “I’m like a sleeper agent,” he says. “To friends, I come with a disclaimer: if I get a call, I’m taking it. It doesn’t matter if I’m at a birthday party… I’m jumping on the back of the dragon.”
