“Trying to act like a powerful royal was quite hard in the beginning because, you know, I’m just an Essex boy,” Harry Collett laughingly tells me as we connect over Zoom on a sunny afternoon in London. But on the other side of the screen, the actor I find as we sit down to chat about his new chapter, weeks ahead of the release of the second season of Game of Thrones prequel House of The Dragon, seems very different from the 16-year-old breakout star we met in Season One as Jacaerys Velaryon.

Collett is charming, witty, and confident — the last perhaps due to finally feeling comfortable with embracing his Westeros-infused long locks, a decision very easy to make when the alternative meant spending another season in a wig. “[At the end of Season One], one of the makeup artists was like, ‘we’re gonna pitch it to Ryan [Condal, House of The Dragon’s showrunner] that you grow out your hair and hopefully you can have it for Season Two.’ And I was like, okay, that would be cool, it would get me a little bit of a few extra minutes in bed in the morning, not being in the makeup chair. That’s great,” he remembers.

Spoilers aside, Season Two of House of the Dragon seems to be a big one for Jace. The firstborn of Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) is stepping up and claiming his position as the heir to the throne, all while learning to deal with the grief of losing his younger brother, Luke, in the final moments of Season One, and a blossoming new relationship with Baela Targaryen (Bethany Anthonia). Catching up with Wonderland, the British actor talks about his creative upbringing, expectations for the next chapters, and what’s next for him beyond King’s Landing. Keep reading…

Hi Harry, how are you today? What have you been up to these days?
I’m great. Sun’s out. Just came back from Amsterdam for the weekend as well, which was so cool.

Season Two is out very soon. How are your expectations for the release? I’m so excited, I can only imagine you are as well.
Yeah, I’m really excited. My expectations are always going to be high. I know that obviously through filming and stuff, I know it’s going to be good. So I’m super excited, to see what people think of it and seeing what the reaction is gonna be like with what I’ve done with my character. So yeah, expectations are high.

Tell me a bit about your creative upbringing. How did everything start for you? When did you first fall in love with acting?
Well, I started off dancing when I was really little, when I was probably about four, street dancing. And I didn’t really think I was going to be an actor. I didn’t have a dream like, ‘I want to be an actor’. It just sort of fell into place. I got spotted by an agent at a show, and they just said, ‘go and try out this audition, we think you’d be really good’. And I was like, I don’t know. And I went in, and I didn’t really know what to think about it, really. And I was about to walk out the door because I was just too nervous. I was just like, ‘nah, this isn’t a bit of me’. My parents said ‘go, you should give it a go’. And I was like, no, no, I really want to leave. So we went to leave, and then they called my name, literally just as I was about to walk out the door. So I went in and did it, loved it, and it just sort of snowballed from there. And now I couldn’t have asked for anything more really. I love my job.

I guess it was meant to be then…
Exactly. Sometimes I think, where would I be now if I had walked out that door? It’s a scary thought, but I’m glad I didn’t.

And how did this project come about? When did you first learn about House of the Dragon? Were you a big fan of Game of Thrones before?
People ask me all the time if I had watched Game of Thrones. But when I first started auditioning for House of the Dragon, I was like 16, 17. So it’s not something that sort of age would watch. And you know, when I first got the self tape for House of the Dragon, it had a code name and my character was called Jack, instead of Jace. So I had no idea what it was for. And it was during Covid times, so that’s when self tapes were a really big thing. So I did about three or four at home, and still had no idea what it was. And then when I got to the last stage, they invited me to the Warner Brothers studios, and that’s where I did my final audition. And I knew that it was something big, and my agent finally told me what it was, they said it was a spin-off of Game of Thrones, set 200 years prior to the events of Game of Thrones. And I was just really excited, but also that made things a lot worse for me ‘cause I was so nervous.

And how did that go? What are some of your memories of that day?
I remember walking in and there were a bunch of people sitting around the stage on sofas. And the first thing I said was, ‘oh, I would shake all of your hands, but because of COVID and that’, and then I was like, ‘why did I say that?!’ And then I sat down and I did the scene, which was originally the scene for Rheneyra and Luke, but they replaced Rhaenyra with Jace, it was quite a cool scene to do. And I sort of just sat down, forgetting all of my lines, my mind went blank. I think I was just stressed out about the scale of what I was auditioning for.

I did a couple of good scenes, but then there were a few that I was just like, ‘I can’t remember, sorry’. I was just way too nervous. And I thought, you know, I saw people outside, that actually looked like a prince, had long hair, proper muscly. I was already preparing for it to be one of those ones I’m just gonna have to let go. And I went home thinking, ‘I haven’t got this, but you know, you take it on the chin. I’ve been doing this for so many years. I’m just like, rejection is what I’m used to anyway’. And then I got an email saying that my tapes have been forwarded onto HBO in America. I thought it was so cool, but I didn’t get my hopes up, I didn’t think much of it. And then I finally got the call that I got the part. I always say this in every interview, but it still hasn’t sunk in, like still now, because it’s just so hard to believe. Now it’s starting to sink in really, especially with season two. But yeah, I just didn’t expect to get it.

Does the long hair help make it feel more real?
It does! When auditioning I basically saw everybody with long hair in there and I was like, they look like a prince and I’ve got the most Essex haircut ever. They asked me to grow out my hair at the end of Season One, and one of the makeup artists said, ‘we’re gonna pitch it to Ryan [Condal, House of The Dragon’s showrunner] that you grow out your hair and hopefully you can have it for season two. And I was like, okay, that would be cool, it would get me a little bit of a few extra minutes in bed in the morning, not being in the makeup chair. So yeah, I grew out my hair. It got really, really long, like proper one direction Harry Styles vibes, but it was really hard to look after because I’ve never dealt with long hair before. I went on a whole journey with my mum with different shampoos and everything. I don’t know how you girls do it.

Surely better than wearing a wig though, no?
100%! Well, they cut it down sort of like this length, which I’ve kept for like the whole time. So it’s a more manageable length. But yeah, I can’t complain. And it looks so cool, especially with the new trailer yesterday, in Winterfell and stuff. And with the long coat and my long hair. I just think it looks really cool. It’s definitely better than the wig but there was nothing we could do about the wig because I had too modern hair when we started shooting.

How was it for you to come back for Season Two? You started Season One at such a young age. How do you see not only your character’s development but also your development as an actor?
I think obviously in Season One, it was all nerve wracking. You want to make a good impression, of course. But also, I was only in two episodes in Season One. So, you know, getting a little bit more screen time this season is definitely a lot more exciting, and a little bit more pressure. But the relationship that we all built as a cast through season one, I feel like we’re just one big family even though it doesn’t show like that on screens. We are, we do get along really well and going into season two, having that relationship definitely helped.

With the development of Jace, it’s really interesting because, you know, we haven’t seen him after the death of his brother, which is going to be very, very interesting to see. It’s made me experiment a lot more this season. I’ve gone to new heights with Jace this season and it’s really been nice to try out new things and actually take advice into consideration of what people have said in season one that I can alter my performance for season two, to try and make everybody happy. Of course, that’s not always gonna be possible, but I’d like to try.

How was your experience on set with your fellow castmates? You mentioned before that you’re one big family. Did you ever receive any advice from them that you know you’ll carry with you forever?
Well, it’s really interesting because we’ve all done very different jobs prior to this job. So we all have advice to kind of give each other. And Emma D’Arcy, they’re great. I spend a lot of time with them on set. And we’re just constantly sharing advice. And it’s really interesting because Emma has a huge sort of play and theatre background, and I’ve just been stuck on the sort of, I used to do theatre, but I’ve sort of been stuck on the whole TV film route. So it’s really interesting to intertwine ideas and especially with this sort of type of dialogue that we have to say in House of the Dragon, it’s very like, it’s not the normal modern language. So I struggled a bit with that and Em was just great with helping me out.

What do you find most challenging about your character?
I guess trying to act sort of like a powerful royal was quite hard from the beginning because, you know, I’m just an Essex boy and I was used to playing these characters, like teenagers and things like that. Jace is a teenager, but 16 in HoTD times is like us in our 30s. So you’re basically playing an adult which was really nice and really refreshing actually. The dialect can get quite difficult as well, especially when you’re speaking Valyrian. That’s quite something to get into, which I found out you can actually learn on Duolingo, which is actually quite funny. Obviously from where I’m from, near East London, I don’t really say my T’s or my H’s sometimes, and it can get a little bit slacky, and I have to be very posh in this. So that’s quite difficult, but like I said, I’ve had the best dialect coaches around me and they’ve really helped.

House of the Dragon Series 2 launches on Sky and streaming service NOW on Monday 17 June.