10 TV Show Mistakes Directors Left In Because The Acting Was Too Good

Returning to the worlds of Westeros and Essos now, and to a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment of character breaking that director Geeta Vasant Patel clearly felt was still worth dropping into the first season of House of the Dragon.

Coming during episode eight of the Game of Thrones prequel series, Olivia Cooke's Alicent Hightower can briefly be spotted sharing a chuckle alongside her on-screen father Rhys Ifans in a dinner montage. But far from Cooke simply laughing along in the scene as the usually rather stoic Queen, the actor appears to briefly let her mask slip for a second as the words "Stop making me laugh," can be seen tumbling out of her mouth.

With Cooke's reaction to Ifans jokingly clapping his hands as Otto being so genuine in the moment, and her quick slip out of Alicent territory thanks to her co-star's unscripted shenanigans not exactly taking anything away from the scene, Patel likely didn't see any obvious reason why the fleeting beat of warmth between the pair couldn't be thrown into the finished episode.

A few flickers of joy were always going to be needed in a series as dedicated to tragedy and family drama as this. And Cooke's failed attempt to keep herself from corpsing mid-scene was evidently too lovely to erase.