Emma D’Arcy calls themself “a masc-leaning non-binary person” in a new Q&A with Beauty Papers, and says clothes once felt like “a certificate that confirmed and proved my gender.” The ‘House of the Dragon’ star says that feeling is gone.
“I’m delighted to say that I don’t feel that way anymore,” D’Arcy told the magazine. “I am what I am regardless of the dressing!”
Beauty Papers posted the conversation to its Substack on Monday, Nov. 9, under its “Unbound” theme. The magazine bills it as “a conversation with Emma D’Arcy on the beauty of being unbound.”
Jackie Nickerson shot the accompanying photos, with D’Arcy in Acne Studios, according to the magazine’s credits.
Dressing Up as ‘an Act of Play’
Asked whether dressing up can be an act of liberation, D’Arcy said, “I think dressing up is an act of play, and I think play is a liberatory tool.”
Asked about the freedom of becoming someone else, D’Arcy went back to how they found acting. “Certainly, as a young person, discovering acting was like being given a cheat code,” they told Beauty Papers.
Clothes weren’t always play, though. D’Arcy said they “used to experience a real fragility when it came to the clothes I wore.”
In 2023, they put it more bluntly. “Clothes are armor for me,” D’Arcy told Highsnobiety that March, in the same interview where they described themself as “a trans-masc presenting person.”
Making Room for Ambiguity
Beauty Papers asked whether people are becoming more accepting or just creating new rules for how to exist. D’Arcy recalled “a wonderful conversation” with the writer Maggie Nelson “in which she suggested trying to use ‘and’ instead of ‘but.'”
D’Arcy is less hopeful about the wider culture. “I worry that the culture is getting less accepting,” they said.
In their view, polarized debate has “robbed us of the right to ambiguity.”
Bringing Their Nonbinary Identity to Work
D’Arcy has traced their openness at work to ‘House of the Dragon,’ the job Gayety first covered in 2022. “This is the first job in which I’ve brought my nonbinary identity to work,” they told Interview Magazine in October 2022.
HBO’s question played a part. “And part of that was because HBO asked me what pronouns I use, and I thought a lot about whether this was the right time,” D’Arcy said.
Earlier in their career, D’Arcy said, they “really worried that it wasn’t possible to be an actor if you aren’t a cisgendered person.”
The role brought a Golden Globe nomination in the best actress category. On the red carpet in January 2023, D’Arcy told E!’s Loni Love the timing was “beautifully ironic.”
“When I was starting out, I really felt that I had to present as a woman in order to find success in this industry,” they said. “It wasn’t sustainable, and I stopped pretending.”
During Season 2 in 2024, the same year their comments on nonbinary representation in Hollywood ran in Gayety, D’Arcy told W Magazine they were glad they’d decided to “marry my personal and professional lives.” “Living a double life would be extremely difficult,” they said.
Failure and ‘Beauty Standards’
D’Arcy’s answer on staying creatively fearless was short. “I think you have to recognise failure as integral to the work,” they said. “If you start becoming scared of failure, it’s game over.”
They also keep their distance from the noise around their shows. “I also make a point of not becoming too involved in the external discourse surrounding projects I’m involved in,” D’Arcy said.
Beauty, the magazine’s whole subject, isn’t a word they claim. “‘Beauty’ isn’t really a word I would ever use in relation to myself,” D’Arcy said, calling “beauty standards” “a mechanism of patriarchal control.”
When ‘House of the Dragon’ Returns
D’Arcy plays Rhaenyra Targaryen, and the show’s third season is already behind them. HBO debuted Season 3 on Sunday, June 21, with eight weekly episodes running to an Aug. 9 finale.
The wait for more is long. HBO renewed the series for “a fourth season, debuting in 2028,” the network said in November 2025.
