An online meme that keeps going around is a kiss from the London premiere of House of the Dragon season 3. It’s not a costume detail or a soundbite from the press line. Thomas May Bailey and Emma D’Arcy were caught on camera doing what couples do in a moment of ease. It spread like wildfire almost right away. It wasn’t really a surprise to people who have been paying attention.
When it comes to their personal life, Emma D’Arcy has always stayed out of the public eye. As their career grew—from small parts in plays to one of the most talked-about shows on high-profile TV—the specifics of who they go home to have purposely stayed vague. Emma talked about a “partner” in 2022 in interviews with GQ, The Hollywood Reporter, and Entertainment Weekly, but she didn’t say who it was. There are no photos. “Just a word,” he said quietly, and he walked away.
It turns out that partner’s name is Thomas May Bailey. And how they got here is a lot more interesting than what you see on the red carpet.
They worked together for the first time in 2011 when Thomas directed Emma in a play. Wow, that was fifteen years ago. It’s easy to forget that, but maybe you shouldn’t. Most relationships that begin as creative partnerships don’t last under the stress of close artistic work. This one did more than just stay alive. It seemed to get deeper. They put together a theater group. They switched places. They worked together on projects for years, even when things changed. They directed, wrote, and planned them together.
Thomas moved into movies in the end. By 2020, he was a co-director at Second Name Productions. In 2023, his short film The Talent, which starred Emma, was nominated for the BIFA award for Best British Short. In an interview about the project, Thomas said that the creative process was truly collaborative. He said that Emma had been involved from the very beginning, giving feedback on the script and helping to build the main character from the ground up. It sounds more like two people who just can’t stop making movies together than like a director casting a favorite actor.
You get the sense that this is what makes them different, at least from how most celebrity couples act. They’re not two famous people who met at a party for their industry and started going to each other’s premieres. Both the business and personal relationship started more than ten years before the fame. Emma was in a play that Thomas was directing when House of the Dragon was just an idea. Things are different because of that.
There have always been creative couples in Hollywood, like the actor-director pair or the writer-performer pair. The silence is what makes Emma and Thomas feel different. The rollout is not managed, and the press is not coordinated. It doesn’t feel like a brand choice when Thomas walks the red carpet. It feels like someone going with their partner to a big event.
From the outside, it’s hard to tell how much of that impression is true and how much is just confidentiality being mistaken for realness. But the timetable is still correct. A shared theater company, fifteen years of work together, and a movie they made together are not things that are made up after the fact.
More than anything else, the kiss at the start of season 3 proved that this relationship is still strong, no matter what form it takes in private. Is still changing. It’s still coming up with new ways to be seen in public, its own way.
