‘House of the Dragon’ Showrunner Fires Back at Fan Backlash to Controversial Birth Scene: Showed It to “as Many Women as Possible”

The premiere of the Game of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon, may have been the most-watched HBO series premiere, but there was one scene in particular that stirred controversy amongst viewers. Fans are slamming a violent forced birth scene as “extremely unnecessary” and “misogynistic,” something co-showrunner Miguel Sapochnick has since shut down.

The scene shows King Viserys (Paddy Considine) making the decision to perform a cesarian section on his wife Queen Aemma Targaryen (Sian Brooke), without her knowledge or consent, in order to save his unborn son. The graphic and bloody scene, which played alongside men fighting on a battlefield, resulted in both Aemma and the baby dying.

Despite the scene not sitting well with many fans in a post-Roe v. Wade world, where a woman’s right to choose her own fate is currently threatened, in an interview with PopSugar, Sapochnick assured that they made a point of showing the scene “to as many women as possible and asked the very question, ‘Was this too violent for you? And unanimously, the response was no. Often the response was, ‘No, if anything, it needs to be more.'”

He added, “It’s raising a point that … hits a real trigger for women, which is this idea of choice and that she doesn’t get to choose. She’s effectively murdered by her husband. And that is a good indication of the state of play in this world that we’re inhabiting.”

Regarding the parallel of the gruesome scene with a battle scene, one Twitter user wrote, “the fucking audacity to go ‘what if i made a unnecessarily long and graphic forced birth scene on par with a fucking war battle scene’ and think that that’s like an okay thing to do with everything going on in real life actual society today ! fuck that.”

Sapochnik further defended the choice to pair these two scenes together, telling PopSugar their editor, Tim Porter, had the idea.

“It seemed like this is an appropriate time to draw that parallel visually between the two, the male and the female struggle,” he said. “One’s fighting on the battlefield, the other’s fighting for survival, sometimes from the person closest to her.”

House of the Dragon airs every Sunday at 9/8c on HBO and HBO Max.