House of the Dragon: Milly Alcock says she was washing dishes in a restaurant before landing HBO series

House of the Dragon star Milly Alcock has opened up about the ways the blockbuster HBO series has changed her life as the first episode finally debuted on Monday (22 August).

22-year-old Alcock plays Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen in the series set 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones.

“I never thought this would happen to me,” the Australian actor told Stellar magazine in a recent interview (per the website JustJared).

“I was washing dishes in a restaurant, living in my mum’s attic. This doesn’t happen to people like me, so it was incredibly quick.”

Alcock said she was cooking dinner at a friend’s house when her agent told her she’d been cast in the fantasy series.

“I froze, and took a deep breath and said to my friend, ‘Do you have wine?’ Then I called my mum,” she said.

Elsewhere in the interview, Alcock spoke about her decision to drop out of Sydney’s Newtown High School of the Performing Arts in year 12 to pursue a career in acting.

“I was like, I either have to sit all of my exams in rural Australia or I was just going to drop out of school,” she said. “So I dropped out because it was never really my thing.”

Alcock left the school to star as misfit Meg in the Australian drama Upright, for which she won the Casting Guild of Australia's Rising Star Award in 2018.

Thrones made stars of its young cast members such as Kit Harington, Emilia Clarke and Sophie Turner. Alcock is joined in the cast by 19-year-old British actor Emily Carey, who plays a young Alicent Hightower.

Carey revealed in a recent interview that she had deleted her social media accounts after receiving backlash for comments she made about her character at Comic-Con.