Emilia Clarke and Regina Hall sat down for a chat for Variety’s Actors on Actors. For more, click here.

Emilia Clarke and Regina Hall spent the TV season playing characters who break through the boys’ club. Clarke, on HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” was Daenerys, the dragon queen whose will to power has brought her on an eight-season journey to the heart of the action in Westeros. Hall, a TV veteran, infiltrates a different center of power on Showtime’s comedy “Black Monday,” as the lone woman in a 1980s Wall Street firm.

Regina Hall: It’s so good to meet you. Because I’m a rare person who, prior to this, had not seen “Game of Thrones.”

Emilia Clarke: Not a rare person at all.

RH: Well, I’m rare amongst my friends.

EC: OK. Not rare amongst mine.

RH: Tell your friends they’re missing out. How did you feel about that being the first role that you tackled?

EC: I was just so happy to be employed. It was my first job. I knew that being in an HBO show was amazing, but more than anything, I knew that having a regular paycheck that wasn’t from waiting tables was also amazing.

RH: I was a waitress. I had a degree in journalism — I had a master’s in journalism — but I was waitressing after I finished grad school.

EC: Yeah. You learn life skills there. I feel empowered with female life skills. It’s only the last few seasons of the show where I’ve allowed myself to indulge, ever so slightly, in “Oh, you got really lucky.” As opposed to “Don’t mess it up.” Now I’m able to fully love the textures and the feeling of playing Daenerys.

What was it like filming “Black Monday”? What was it like stepping into ’80s shoes and shoulder pads and the hair and everything? Continue reading  »

A Battle for My Life

Just when all my childhood dreams seemed to have come true, I nearly lost my mind and then my life. I’ve never told this story publicly, but now it’s time.

It was the beginning of 2011. I had just finished filming the first season of “Game of Thrones,” a new HBO series based on George R. R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” novels. With almost no professional experience behind me, I’d been given the role of Daenerys Targaryen, also known as Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Lady of Dragonstone, Breaker of Chains, Mother of Dragons. As a young princess, Daenerys is sold in marriage to a musclebound Dothraki warlord named Khal Drogo. It’s a long story—eight seasons long—but suffice to say that she grows in stature and in strength. She becomes a figure of power and self-possession. Before long, young girls would dress in platinum wigs and flowing robes to be Daenerys Targaryen for Halloween.

The show’s creators, David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, have said that my character is a blend of Napoleon, Joan of Arc, and Lawrence of Arabia. And yet, in the weeks after we finished shooting the first season, despite all the looming excitement of a publicity campaign and the series première, I hardly felt like a conquering spirit. I was terrified. Terrified of the attention, terrified of a business I barely understood, terrified of trying to make good on the faith that the creators of “Thrones” had put in me. I felt, in every way, exposed. In the very first episode, I appeared naked, and, from that first press junket onward, I always got the same question: some variation of “You play such a strong woman, and yet you take off your clothes. Why?” In my head, I’d respond, “How many men do I need to kill to prove myself?”

To relieve the stress, I worked out with a trainer. I was a television actor now, after all, and that is what television actors do. We work out. On the morning of February 11, 2011, I was getting dressed in the locker room of a gym in Crouch End, North London, when I started to feel a bad headache coming on. I was so fatigued that I could barely put on my sneakers. When I started my workout, I had to force myself through the first few exercises.

Then my trainer had me get into the plank position, and I immediately felt as though an elastic band were squeezing my brain. I tried to ignore the pain and push through it, but I just couldn’t. I told my trainer I had to take a break. Somehow, almost crawling, I made it to the locker room. I reached the toilet, sank to my knees, and proceeded to be violently, voluminously ill. Meanwhile, the pain—shooting, stabbing, constricting pain—was getting worse. At some level, I knew what was happening: my brain was damaged. Continue reading  »

As Daenerys Targaryen in HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” the British actress Emilia Clarke battles evil while armed with dragons and an apparent immunity to fire. But as Louisa Clark in “Me Before You,” she’s a mere mortal caring for a demonically angry Englishman (Sam Claflin) determined to end his life after being hit by a motorcycle and paralyzed. At which point Lou decides to help him live again.

It’s a role Ms. Clarke was determined to play the moment she received the Jojo Moyes novel from which Thea Sharrock’s romantic drama, opening on June 3, was adapted. “I was utterly convinced that someone had found me and written me, Emilia, down,” she said. “It wasn’t even a question that I would do whatever it took to be able to play Lou.”

That included chemistry reads with six men before she and Mr. Claflin (“The Hunger Games”) were partnered, “which was wonderful because we already knew each other,” she said. “We sort of cheated.”

In a phone interview, the Emmy-nominated, Berkshire-reared Ms. Clarke, 29, a Drama Center London grad who had but two tiny parts on her professional résumé when she was cast as Daenerys, spoke about her love of the sea, warrior women and unlikely namesakes. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Why are you calling from California?

I spend half my time in London, half my time in Los Angeles. But sometimes L.A. can feel a bit intense and soul sucking. When you’re by the sea, you’ve got that sea air blowing all of the anxiety cobwebs away from every person who’s desperate to make it. The people walk around with no shoes on and surf, and I feel like I’m on holiday every day. Continue reading  »

In an interview with Die Zeit, Emilia talks about how Terminator Genisys was a dream come true for her. The article is in German, but in case there are fans who are either German or understand German you can read it below. A beautiful new photoshoot has also been released. I have added medium and low quality outtakes to the gallery. You can view them by visiting the following link.

Emilia Clarke traümt Terminator
Ich wollte aufspringen und schreien, aber es ging nicht.

Die Arbeit verfolgt mich oft in meine Träume. So auch zuletzt beim Dreh von Terminator Genisys. In neun von zehn Nächten träumte ich von meiner Rolle und den bevorstehenden Szenen. Zur Vorbereitung absolvierte ich ein intensives Training und lernte, wie man eine Waffe richtig hält und wie man kämpft. Davon war ich abends so ausgelaugt, dass ich müde ins Bett fiel und die wildesten Träume hatte. Leider blieben mir keine konkreten Szenen in Erinnerung, nur das Gefühl der Erschöpfung beim Aufwachen.

Mit dem Schlafen hatte ich ansonsten noch nie Probleme. Vor Kurzem las ich ein Interview, in dem jemand erzählte, er stelle sich beim Einschlafen vor, ein U-Boot zu sein. So ähnlich ist das auch bei mir: Ich lasse Stück für Stück los und tauche hinein in den Schlaf. Nur wenn ich besonders aufgekratzt bin vom vorangegangenen Tag, funktioniert das nicht. Dann versuche ich, mich an einem positiven Gedanken festzuhalten. Das hilft mir, runterzukommen.

Continue reading  »

Emilia Clarke: Game Of Thrones season six will be ‘sick’
Emilia has teased that the season six storyline will have even more shocks in store for Game of Thrones fans.

The 28-year-old actress, who reprises her role as dragon queen Daenerys Targaryen in the small-screen retelling of George RR Martin’s fantasy novels, has already had a glimpse at the scripts for the forthcoming season.

“I’ve seen some of the new scripts and I’m like a kid on a sugar high,” she told the Daily Star. The British actress continued: “I can’t handle how sick some of them are. “We’re just going to hit the audience with every episode, coming up with something more mental that the last. I can’t believe some of the twists in store.”

Emilia also weighed in on Jon Snow’s fate, hinting Kit Harington’s character will not return. The actress and her Game Of Thrones co-stars have started read-throughs and rehearsals for season six of the show.

Continue reading  »