EWAN MITCHELL PHOTOGRAPHED AND INTERVIEWED FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE.
Like most people, Ewan Mitchell is accustomed to anonymity.
So during a recent trip to Manhattan, he was surprised by what a hotel doorman asked when he arrived: “You haven’t packed your eye patch?”
The actor is still getting used to strangers making the connection in public.
“I wouldn’t think people would recognize me, but they do.”
“I think it’s because of my strong chin.”
“When I’m dressed up as Aemond and catch myself in the mirror, he scares even me a little bit.”
When he’s not in character, Mitchell is soft-spoken and occasionally flashes a boyish grin, though he retains much of Aemond’s seriousness and quiet intensity.
He is also very private: He stays off social media and in the past has shied away from sharing much with the public.
“Once you lose the mystery, you can’t really get it back.”
HE KNOWS THAT AEMOND'S KEY ROLE IN S2 MEANS HE MUST ALSO EMBRACE THE SPOTLIGHT
“There is a point where you have to go, now’s the time to pull back the curtain.”
Like Aemond, Mitchell is a second son.
He grew up in Derby, an industrial town in the middle of England, and his parents expected him to follow his older brother’s footsteps and work at Rolls-Royce (the aerospace and industrial technology company, not the carmaker).
HIS INSPIRATIONS AND BECOME AN ACTOR
Inspired by films like “Citizen Kane” and “Taxi Driver,” Mitchell knew early on he wanted to become an actor.
When he was 13, his teacher asked each student in his class what they wanted to do when they grew up.
“Then it came to me, and I said, ‘I’m going to be an actor,’ and everyone laughed at me.”
His family could not afford tuition for drama school, so Mitchell attended a two-year vocational school, where he studied design and technology while working part-time at a restaurant and in customer service at a local soccer club.
Midway through the program, at 17, he was accepted into the Nottingham Television Workshop, a drama group that trains young people in acting.
Through the Workshop, Mitchell landed a leading role in a 2015 short film called “Fire,” about a young man who leaks fire from his hands.
Once the short was released, Mitchell downloaded it onto a dozen CDs, took the train to London and stopped by the offices of every agent he could find, handing them each a copy.
The one person who called back continues to represent Mitchell.
“By hook or by crook, I wanted to make sure that I was going to be in this business.”
ABOUT BEING CASTED AS AEMOND TARGARYEN
Aemond’s growing prominence in the show requires Mitchell to embrace the spotlight as well.
“There is a point where you have to go, now’s the time to pull back the curtain.”
But being cast as Aemond in “House of the Dragon” has been his biggest professional turning point by far.
“Since landing him, I feel like I’m able to now steer the course of my career.”
Mitchell had been rewatching the classic Hollywood adventure film “The Vikings” (1958) and musing about how he wanted to play a morally dark character similar to the one played by Kirk Douglas when he received an email inviting him to submit a taped audition for Aemond.
When he eventually auditioned in person, he left a lasting impression on Ryan Condal, the showrunner for “House of the Dragon.”
“When Ewan came into the room, he just had this presence to him that I can best describe as unsettling,” Condal said.
“It was kind of quietly terrifying the way he performed it, and it was totally different than everybody else. And then he thanked us very politely and left the room.”
Condal recalls asking Kate Rhodes James, the casting director, “Is he always like that?”
She replied, “Oh no, he’s just a very intense northern boy.”
To prepare for his role, Mitchell did not watch “Game of Thrones.” Instead, he read portions of “Fire & Blood,” the book by George R.R.
Martin that inspired the show, and studied the performances of Michael Fassbender in “Prometheus” and Peter O’Toole in “Lawrence of Arabia,” each playing a figure who wields power for his own ends.
ABOUT MATT SMITH AND DAEMON TARGARYEN
On his first day on set, Mitchell consulted with Condal and decided that he would avoid interacting with Matt Smith, who plays Aemond’s similarly menacing uncle and rival, Daemon, in order to heighten the tension between the two characters.
Mitchell had grown up admiring Smith’s performance in “Doctor Who.”
But on set Mitchell avoided any eye contact with him, keeping his distance until the climactic scene near the end of the first season when Aemond and Daemon finally face off.
“There’s this addictive kind of quality when you’re in the shoes of a character.”
“When you lose yourself for a moment, it’s almost like a dream.”
ABOUT HIS HOME AND HIS DOGS
When he isn’t acting, Mitchell still lives at his family home in Derby and spends time with his dogs, three whippets named Eva, Bella and Bonnie.
“I’ve just got to stay on the dragon.”
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