Nino Munoz for Variety A few days ago, Milly Alcock flew from Kyoto to Los Angeles after finishing production on a new movie. Then, after a fitting, she traveled to Las Vegas to do some press and appear onstage as part of DC Studios’ CinemaCon presentation for “Supergirl.” She’d gotten one hour of sleep.
“So my jet lag is like —” Alcock makes her eyes into slits. “And that’s why I’m very out of it in all those interviews.”
Today, it’s “Supergirl” we’re here to discuss, a movie neither of us has seen. When I tell her right away that I haven’t gotten to screen it — a rarity for a cover story interview — and that I’m slightly abashed, she says, conspiratorially, “Neither have I!”
Nino Munoz for Variety Alcock’s range as an actor is evident to me though. I’ve watched her play the headstrong, determined, high-born Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen in HBO’s “House of the Dragon,” as well as that character’s opposite: Simone in Netflix’s 2025 limited series “Sirens,” whose Lilly Pulitzer clothes cover up a scrappy social climber who’ll stop at nothing to get what she wants.
In the CinemaCon footage for “Supergirl,” Kara Zor-El is completely nonchalant as the space bus she’s traveling on with Ruthye (Eve Ridley), her teenage charge, is boarded by thieving raiders. Kara, wearing a vintage Blondie T-shirt and brown trench coat, fights them off while making sarcastic quips, almost Han Solo-like. The story of “Supergirl” is Kara’s crippling identity crisis, but, at least while in protector mode, she’s fully in control.
Alcock appears to be similarly grounded. Before “House of the Dragon,” but after she had a starring role in “Upright,” a hit Australian TV show at age 18, in need of extra cash, she continued washing dishes at a popular Sydney restaurant. “I sound like a Roald Dahl character. I was living in the attic in my family home because we didn’t have enough rooms — it was so hot in there,” she says. “I was a stick of a thing. I was washing these dishes so proudly and so terribly, and it was an open kitchen so everyone could see me.”
She says that our conversation — over breakfast at The London West Hollywood — is her first long in-person interview, but she doesn’t appear to be anything other than comfortable, self-assured and quick to laugh. Nor is her exhaustion evident. She’s bright-eyed, having woken up early to work out, then gotten a black iced coffee before doing an interview over Zoom. It’s on our table now, ice melting. Always black? I ask. “No, I like to change it up,” she says. And what was the other interview? “She only got 20 minutes,” Alcock says with a smile. “Don’t worry!”
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