How to Tell a Casting Director You Were Born to Play a Targaryen

A Practical Guide for the Average American Dreamer with a Theater Degree and a Ring Light

NOTE: Because it's casting in London you'll need to cute-stalk the casting director on social media.

So, you’ve just graduated from a respectable Midwestern liberal arts college with a BFA in Drama and a minor in Creative Self-Expression Through Interpretive Sword Dance. You’ve packed your Subaru with two headshots, a yoga mat, and an “actor’s essential oils kit,” and driven west to Hollywood, the mythical land where all beautiful people are apparently “working on a pilot.”

And now, fate calls: HBO (or possibly some adjacent streaming service owned by a cereal company) is casting for House of the Dragon: The Reckoning of Even More Dragons. You just know—deep in your monologue-trained soul—that you were born to play a Targaryen. Now for your IG DM to the casting director:

1. Training - "Attended middle school for the Pejorative Arts in King’s Landing."  "Classically trained (summer studies with the Maesters at the Citadel in the Reach)” but also "Spiritually descended from Aerys II." (You may wish to research who that is later.)
2. Casting directors see hundreds of blondes a day—but how many of them have natural white-blonde dreadlocks? You didn’t dye them, you "summoned" them during a lunar eclipse at your first Coachella.
3. Union - SAG-Eligible but totally open to joining the Night's Watch.
4. Stage name aka IG handle - "I am Aegon, first of my name, scourge of the Orange Julius, conqueror of the Circle K." aka ___❤️AEGON❤️___
5. Location - Don't say "I just moved to L.A." You fled your ancestral homeland after a bloody coup in the student theater department.
6. Lineage - Your father was "Master of Coin" at Pricewaterhouse-Cooper.
7. Hobbies - "Conversational ancient Valeryian."