Emma D’Arcy’s Stunning Negroni Sbagliato (With Prosecco in it) Breaks Her Silence

An innocuous press clip promoting a prestige fantasy drama about dragons has brought us here.

“Us” is me and the now infamous boisson au choix of one Emma D’Arcy, who plays Rhaenyra Targaryen on HBO’s House of the Dragon. “Here” is a cocktail bar tucked away on a cobblestone street, where I’m perched atop a slightly uncomfortable stool. I’m positioned directly across from the spirits world’s newest “it girl,” the Negroni Sbagliato (with Prosecco in it). Confident and elusive, she wields a maturity that suggests she knows dark, unknowable things, but that mystique is cleverly hidden behind that wide-eyed ennui that accompanies newfound fame. She gives you the sense she’s done this before, but not enough that she doesn’t feel fresh … like a painting that’s still wet.

We wordlessly settle into our understood roles: I, the enraptured cretin she’s deigned to talk to for this piece; she the newly in-demand muse of uncultured pub frequenters everywhere. She is the screensaver on every lesbian’s laptop, and I’m looking right at her. We’re both glistening with a light sheen of sweat. (Well, Negroni Sbagliato is glistening; I’m dripping like a drowned rat). It’s unseasonably hot for a season in which both a Game of Thrones spin-off and a Lord of the Rings prequel series are simultaneously streaming. You’d think some condensation and visibly melting ice would unnerve this natural Italian beauty, but she stays cool and collected under my gaze.

She already knows what I want to ask, and she’s content to let me stew in my own discomfort until I drum up the nerve to do it.

I take the less direct route—a true Cancer to my core.

“Have you seen the video?”

She knows the one: a light-hearted, staged sit-down between HotD’s leading actors, D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke. The two volley answers to fairly bland questions to promote a series that really doesn’t need any extra publicity. When Cooke tosses a prompt related to D’Arcy’s favorite drink, their answer teases a concoction that has since held the annals of Tumblr in a merciless vise grip.

It’s a friendly lob of a question that pulls a breathy chuckle from Negroni Sbagliato’s thinly rimmed mouth. She has. She finds it funny. Unlike the more established starlets—the Martinis, the Aperol spritz—she’s not above laughing at herself or the various memes that her existence has recently birthed. It only adds to her drink-next-door appeal.

My next query: “Were you aware that the queer community has added negroni/sbagliato /prosecco to the official list of identifying pronouns?” She wasn’t, but she’s always considered herself an ally. In fact, Negroni’s just begun to examine her own identity in recent years, having fluctuated between the herbaceous juniper of its youth and the bitter citrus notes it often likes to experiment with. She’s landed somewhere in the middle: a taste-neutral, or rather taste-defiant swill with a stout and sturdy frame and a delicious lick of licorice at her core. It’s a combination that hints at decadent, thickly syruped secrets once you move past the bubbly exterior she’s perfected for the camera.

Negroni credits D’Arcy, who turns out to be a friend in her inner-circle, for helping to define her flavors. She’s less pleased with the newfound fame—and the fact that countless people have been crowding her mentions, gushing over how they’ve adopted her into their stable of no-frill cocktails. It’s not the attention that bothers her, she says. “It’s the comparisons to the vodka sodas, whiskey gingers, and worst of all, the Old Fashioneds” that grate her rocks glass. After all, she adds, can’t the drink of choice of a future Emmy-winner, who’s currently starring on a show about dragons and dynasties and poorly laid wigs, just be her own thing?

It’s a serious question, but it’s hidden behind a kittenish smirk that hints she already knows the answer and is content to toy with me. I’m content to let her. I’m clearly outmatched in this battle of wits, but Negroni is graceful enough to indulge my stuttering silence. Like the many bombshells that have come before her—the Cosmos, the French 75, the Queen’s Dubonnet—she’s well-versed in the art of the tease, beguiling without baiting one to frustration. When she faces me head-on, all sharp, geometric angles and blood-colored bitters, and softly asks me to give her a stir—“My Campari’s begun to settle”—I freeze. Is Negroni Sbagliato with Prosecco flirting with me?

She’s a blue mood, a slow dance, lulling me to be bolder in my probing.

“Where do you think this viral obsession with you comes from?” I bring myself to ask. “Other than the video, of course.” She delicately chews the question as I chomp on an unfortunate cube of ice in my water glass. “I’m not sure it has anything to do with me, really,” she concludes. “It’s the interaction, the reaction that my presence sparks that’s so watchable. When Emma offers up a simple Negroni, it’s Olivia [Cooke]’s reaction that spurs them to be more adventurous. That’s when the ‘sbagliato’ comes in.”

And the prosecco?

“Well, once you get Olivia going, you’ve got to play, don’t you?” she laughs. “I think Emma’s having a bit of fun with Olivia at that point. They always add in the prosecco, but they take a little pause and offer it almost cheekily. They’re friends. They’re just having a good time.”

How does Negroni feel about Olivia Cooke calling her “stunning?”

“Well I’m obviously flattered,” she replies, as if I’ve just supplied the silliest question she’ll ever be asked in her life. “Thoroughbreds is one of my favorite films. And is there anything in the world better than her Manchester accent?”

No. No, there’s not.

I half-heartedly pose a theory that D’Arcy might be trying to land a brand ambassador deal with Campari following that recent New York Times interview, in which both D’Arcy and Cooke were asked about the viral video and Darcy joked about partnering with the classic liqueur. Negroni politely declines to comment on any endorsement partnerships the two might have in the pipeline—but we both know I’m simply stalling, trying to stretch this conversation like a piece of saltwater taffy on a hot summer’s day.

It’s now or never. I’ve got to ask the question I used to pitch this interview to my editors, or it’s likely this was all for naught. But I’m worried the illusion I’ve silently concocted—that this was a date, that Negroni somehow finds me interesting enough to merit an attraction, that we’ll see each other again once this professional exchange has concluded—was carefully construed by her and somehow misconstrued by me. I take a deep breath.

“After all of this, with the online fandom, the press, and the backlash from bartenders on TikTok, do you think some people are going to be disappointed when they find out what you really taste like?”

Negroni pauses, studying me with an unimpressed stare that stings more than her bitters. What she does next is shocking, but perhaps it shouldn’t be.

She smoothly, silently, rises from her place on the bar and walks out the door.