Ahead of her British stage debut in The Seagull, the Game of Thrones star talks about her self-doubt as the hit show took off, her decision to write about her brain aneurysms – and showing her love through baking

On 16 March 2020, Emilia Clarke went on stage with the cast of The Seagull. Previews had started, and the actor was about to make her much-anticipated West End debut after a decade starring in some of the biggest films and TV shows imaginable. At the half-hour mark, everything stopped: the government had decreed that theatres were to shut with immediate effect. Lost and adrift, everyone huddled into a pub, which was filled with crowds from the surrounding theatres. “My lawyer from America was calling about something,” recalls Clarke now. “And she was like, ‘Get out of the pub!’ We had no idea of the enormity of it.”

Events, of course, got in the way. Two-and-a-bit years on, we meet at The Seagull rehearsal studios in south London, a cavernous former warehouse with a skeletal stage set up in the middle of it. Not much is known about Jamie Lloyd’s production of the classic Chekhov play, but hopefully it isn’t too much of a spoiler to say – based on a diorama sitting on a side table – that it will feature some chairs. “There are no distractions,” says Clarke. “We don’t have a samovar. There’s no linen. There aren’t any trees. No one’s in crinoline. What we’re doing could be seen as quite radical. I think it might be Marmite.”

The actor is no stranger to the divisive power of art – on which more later – but the spare and lean production marks a pronounced change from the jobs she has done since being catapulted into superstardom by Game of Thrones in 2011. Following the phenomenally successful HBO series, in which she portrayed Daenerys Targaryen, Clarke has starred alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator Genisys, played Han Solo’s love interest in Solo: A Star Wars Story and dressed as an elf in Paul Feig’s Emma Thompson-scripted romcom Last Christmas. She has won a Bafta Britannia award and been nominated for numerous Emmy, Screen Actors Guild and Critics’ Choice awards; in 2019, she was one of Time’s 100 most influential people.
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The actor who played Queen Daenerys says she’s been pressured to shoot naked since the show, but is ‘a lot more savvy’ now

Emilia Clarke has revealed she felt uncomfortable acting in some of her nude scenes in Game Of Thrones.

The British actress played queen Daenerys Targaryen in HBO’s sprawling epic, which became notorious for its explicit portrayal of sex and violence.

Clarke, who was 23 when she started filming Game Of Thrones, said she would be in tears before shooting certain “terrifying” nude scenes.

Speaking on actor Dax Shepard’s podcast Armchair Expert, she said: “I took the job and then they sent me the scripts and I was reading them, and I was like, ‘Oh, there’s the catch!’

“But I’d come fresh from drama school and I approached it as a job: if it’s in the script then it’s clearly needed. This is what this is and I’m going to make sense of it and that’s what I’m going to do and everything’s going to be cool.

“I’ve never been on a film set like this before. I’d been on a film set twice before then, and I’m now on a film set completely naked with all of these people, and I don’t know what I’m meant to do, and I don’t know what’s expected of me, and I don’t know what you want, and I don’t know what I want.

“Regardless of there being nudity or not, I would have spent that first season thinking I’m not worthy of requiring anything. I’m not worthy of needing anything at all.” Continue reading  »

Emilia Clarke has conquered her health issues. Now will Daenerys conquer the Seven Kingdoms?

Women all over the world are riding the tiger.

Except Emilia Clarke.

She’s riding the dragon.

The fire-and-ice fantasy world of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” may be set in feudal times, but the heady whoosh of women leaders rising on the show, as it reaches its bloody conclusion, parallels the heady whoosh of women leaders rising around the globe in the last couple of years.

All eyes are now on the fierce four: Daenerys, Cersei, Sansa and Arya. Going into its eighth and final season, the show has offered a primer in how a female leader must act differently than a male leader in a world run predominantly by men — the double standards, the way an action can be perceived in very different ways depending on whether it’s a man or a woman undertaking it.

“The whole show is just a discussion on power,” Clarke tells me in an interview at the Mandarin Oriental before the premiere at Radio City Music Hall. “Because the Iron Throne is representative of complete and consuming power and what that does to someone. It’s fascinating, what I’ve found about the sacrifices that you make and what you get out of it as a result. Ultimately, if you get on the throne, what are you really getting?”

She cites her beautiful and icy Lannister rival, Queen Cersei (played by Lena Headey), who has lost her three children to murder and suicide and driven off Jaime, her brother/lover, who grew disgusted by her rapaciousness. Continue reading  »

Now it’s their turn: On HBO’s Game of Thrones, the show’s powerful female characters are about to take center stage more than ever before. So for this week’s issue of Entertainment Weekly, we go behind the scenes of the Emmy-dominating drama’s ultra-mysterious new season, plus profile six of the show’s leading ladies whose storylines are about to change Westeros forever.

“The women are rocking this season — and I’m not just saying that because they’re on your cover,” says HBO programming president Michael Lombardo. “Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) always does, but also Brienne (Gwendoline Christie), Arya (Maisie Williams), Sansa (Sophie Turner), Cersei (Lena Headey), Margaery (Natalie Dormer), and other characters too, like Yara (Gemma Whelan). They power this season. It’s organic to the storytelling, yet a radical shift. It’s the women that are the hope that we’re watching as the chess pieces move this season, and it’s very exciting.”

The ascension of Thrones’ female characters isn’t a new strategy. Showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss, working from the narrative template established by author George R.R. Martin, introduced Westeros five years ago as a male-dominated world ruled by figures like Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa) and Tywin Lannister (Charles Dance). One by one, these strong and commanding men have suffered tragic turns of fate that have cleared the way for a fleet of heroines who have learned new strategies to survive and conquer in a brutal world. Off screen, too, the female actors have become breakouts — landing coveted roles in films ranging from Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Christie) and X-Men: Apocalypse (Turner).

In EW’s new double-issue, we profile the women of Thrones, tease what to expect in season 6, provide catch-up and binging guides, plus take you behind the scenes in Northern Ireland and Belfast to reveal how Thrones team pulled off its biggest season yet (and the best, according to the showrunners) while trying to keep more secrets from its fans than ever before.

EW has plenty of online Thrones coverage planned, too – exclusive news, cast interviews, recaps, and more (without spoiling any of the significant twists to come). [Source]

Emilia Clarke doesn’t want to be remembered as Daenerys Targaryen
Emilia talks about taking over an iconic role and how she’ll be sad when her big show comes to an end.

Emilia Clarke doesn’t want to be typecast. On many occasions the “Game of Thrones” star, who plays determined Mother of Dragons Daenerys Targaryen, has said she’s reluctant to do nudity — one of the reasons she turned down “Fifty Shades of Grey.” “I have done naked scenes before, and I was worried about being stigmatized by doing it again,” she admits. Now she’s in “Terminator: Genisys” playing a much more fierce character: Sarah Connor, the mother of post-apocalyptic revolutionary John Connor (Jason Clarke), who in the film’s own timeline has been fighting alongside nice killer cyborg T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger, again) since childhood.

Do you feel you’ve been lucky with the roles you’ve received?
If being lucky means being able to work for many years seeking an opportunity, then yes, I’ve been lucky. Television gave me a boost, but I don’t want people to remember me as Daenerys Targaryen from “Game of Thrones”.

The characters you play tend to be very strong. How alike them are you?
I’m not ultra feminist, but I feel that I identify with girls who can do everything, and who use their power to defend good causes. I now get to play with a very different version of a young Sarah Connor, and I like that a female character has become iconic.

Is it difficult to perform such an iconic role?
I think it was more exciting than scary; Sarah is legendary and beautiful. What we did was impregnate her with a different force and create something new.

You seem to gravitate towards action and fantasy.
I have fun. Although for that you have to be in shape and have good arms: holding weapons, shooting and running involves a lot of wheezing. When you see a big action movie, it seems like everything is easy, but when you start to do it, it’s not. Especially with Sarah, who’s a tough woman who becomes a warrior and draws strength from all sides.

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