‘Game of Thrones’ star Emilia Clarke has announced a new project she’ll be overseeing in the coming weeks, as she enlists the help of some celebrity friends in reading poetry over Instagram.

The Emilia Clarke web series is a wonderful new idea from the actress, where she and her friends “who will be reading aloud poetry for the heart and soul.” The actress and her celebrity friends will be reading ‘The Poetry Pharmacy: Tried-and-True Prescriptions for the Heart, Mind and Soul’.

She started off her first entry in the series by saying to her followers: “Hi everyone, so this is just a little introductory post to something that I’ve been putting together over this time that we’ve been experiencing.”

Clarke then began to read aloud a poem about loneliness, which she dedicates to brain injury survivors and the charity Same You. Clarke previously revealed that she suffered two brain aneurysms while filming ‘Game of Thrones’.

Be sure to stay tuned over the coming weeks as the Emilia Clarke web series kicks off. [Source]

Dear NHS: 100 Stories to Say Thank You has been assembled from some of the best-known voices in the UK in a week and will be published in July

Adam Kay, who has topped bestseller charts with his stories of life as as junior doctor in This Is Going to Hurt, is pulling together a book of “love letters to the NHS” from major names including Paul McCartney, Michael Palin, Stephen Fry and Emma Thompson.

Kay started the project a week ago and already has 100 contributors signed up, from authors such as Lee Child, Jacqueline Wilson, EL James and Jilly Cooper to presenters including Graham Norton, Emily Maitliss and Peter Kay, actors from Dawn French to Emilia Clarke and Joanna Lumley, and sportspeople including Peter Crouch and Tanni Grey-Thompson.

Each is writing a personal story about how the NHS was there for them and how it changed their lives, with all profits from the book to go to NHS Charities Together and the Lullaby Trust, which supports parents bereaved of babies and young children.

“Every single one of us owes so much to the NHS. It is our single greatest achievement as a nation, always there for us, and never more so than now,” said Kay, a former junior doctor turned comedian and writer. “Since this project was conceived barely a week ago, I have been blown away by the number of people who have been in touch to share their amazing stories. I hope that the book, and the money it raises for charity, will in some way manage to say thank you to the heroes who are putting our lives before their own every day.”

Bill Bryson, Nick Hornby, Ian Rankin and Martin Freeman will also be among the letter writers, as will Caitlin Moran, Peter Capaldi and Zoe Ball. The book will be published on 9 July.

Publisher Orion’s Anna Valentine said the stories told were “by turns deeply moving, hilarious, hopeful and impassioned”.

Orion’s parent company, Hachette UK, recently began offering free ebooks to NHS workers, after author Mari Hannah was contacted by a frontline NHS worker telling her that her books were keeping her spirits up. [Source]

Want to dine with the Mother of Dragons?

Emilia Clarke is auctioning off a virtual dinner with her in exchange for donations to the Same You COVID-19 relief fund.

The “Game of Thrones” star took to Instagram to ask fans to help her raise £250,000 ($309,358) for the cause.

“How would you feel about having dinner with me virtually?” the 33-year-old actress said in a post on Monday. “When you donate … 12 lucky people will join me virtually and we’re going to put together a storecupboard dinner Together. We’ll cook it and then we’ll eat it together.”

She continued, “We’ll discuss lots of things. Isolation and fear and also funny videos and you know, the fact that I can’t really cook. So it’s going to be fun. It’s going to be interesting.”

Money raised will help provide stroke and brain injury patients with “essential support: as well as help free up hospital beds needed during the pandemic.

“100% of your generosity will fund virtual rehab clinic support in the coming weeks,” the captioned the post. “A very big task and a very big ask but you are all very big hearted souls so I know you’ll want to help me help them! ❤️🏆❤️.”

The donation link can be found here. [Source]

Emilia Clarke and her dog are the latest celebs to take part in the “Save with Stories” campaign.

The “Game of Thrones” star took to Instagram Live where she tried to read “Bear’s Loose Tooth” by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman but her puppy, Ted, was more occupied on licking Clarke’s face.

Once things calmed down, Clarke was able to read the four-minute story to help entertain children at home during self-isolation and raise money for the Save With Stories Fund organized by No Kid Hungry and Save the Children.

“THIRTY MILLION CHILDREN rely on school for food. Responding to the needs of kids during these school closures, @savethechildren and @nokidhungry have a new fund @SAVEWITHSTORIES to support food banks, and mobile meal trucks, and community feeding programs with funds to do what they do best—and also—with educational toys, books, and worksheets to make sure brains are full, as well as bellies,” Clarke wrote next to her video.

She then asked fans to help out with a $10 donation by texting SAVE to 20222. [Source]

Now that celebrities can reach their fans on a more personal level over social media, the lines between celebrity and activist have blurred. Many actors, musicians, and models use their platforms to raise awareness about the issues they care about. And several famous faces have joined 2000 supporters in signing an open letter to global leaders asking them to “tackle the emergency facing people and planet” including hunger, poverty, education, and climate change. Little Women’s Emma Watson and Game Of Thrones Emilia Clarke’s names appear alongside Malala Yousafzai, Dr Jane Goodall, and #MeToo founder Tarana Burke urging leaders to take action.

The letter was published on the Global Goals website alongside a video illustrating the campaigners’ points. In 2015 the UN committed to the Global Goals for Sustainable Development Plan which agreed to tackle the problems mentioned in the new open letter by 2030. Danny Boyle, Emilia Clarke, Spike Lee, Idris Elba, Richard Curtis, Stephen Fry, and Thandie Newton were among the celebrities who signed the open letter.

“[Five] years ago, at the United Nations, 193 countries committed to the Global Goals for Sustainable Development,” it reads in part. “A historic plan to end extreme poverty, conquer inequality and fix the climate crisis. Look at our world now. Our climate is heating up. Natural disasters are increasing. Millions flee their homes.

“Children suffer without vital food and healthcare. Activists are murdered for their views. Girls and women are refused an education and subjected to discrimination and violence. But we still dare to hope that in 2020 you will act decisively and courageously and kickstart a Decade of Action. We need you to act faster. To find the finance. To track implementation. To unlock radical solutions. We are watching you. And we will fight every day, for people, for the planet.”

After plotting world domination for eight seasons on Game of Thrones, Clarke reflects on her own quieter sense of ambition, rooted in the “sustainable and real,” she says. Meanwhile, a new role as Clinique’s ambassador, announced today, puts her back on the global stage.

Call it auspicious, to sit down with a former queen on the eve of a nail-biting election. It was a clear December morning in London, a day before Britons cast their fate (and Brexit’s) with Boris Johnson, and the Protector of the Realm—to use one of Emilia Clarke’s many titles on Game of Thrones—was assessing the political landscape. “Is it a full moon?” the actor said, interest piqued. (An Instagram astrologer had told me so.) “Maybe that will kick the . . . —no,” she interrupted herself with a weary laugh. “It will just soften the patriarchy ever so lightly.”

Clarke, whose now-departed character was known to scorch entire neighborhoods with one dragonic exhale, leads with a comparatively light hand. In a November post about the UK’s voter-registration deadline, she delivered a message (“You have a voice. Use it!”) with a silent procession of cue cards. Last March, when she first revealed her tumultuous medical history—a pair of brain aneurysms in the show’s early days—she did so with a lyrical, unsparing essay on the New Yorker’s website. She isn’t much for peddling influence; instead, she reps sweatshirts for Same You, the charity she founded to support neurorehabilitation for young patients. After the GOT series finale and its torrent of press, she has kept things earnest and under-the-radar—however much someone with 26 million followers can slip into incognito mode.

That makes Clarke’s latest role—the first global ambassador for the beauty company Clinique—at once a like-minded alliance and a return to the spotlight. “You’ve got your spidey senses,” explained the actor, sitting on a gray velvet sofa (a softer iron throne) at the Edition hotel. “My gut was like, ‘You’re going to enjoy this!’ ” At a time when authentic is a buzzword on every brand’s bingo card, she manages a kind of translucent candor. (The way Clarke described the brand’s longstanding image—“completely universal, totally relatable, totally modern”—sounds like the elevator pitch for tapping the 33-year-old as a spokesperson.) A sunbeam slipped across the room, igniting her lagoon-colored eyes. I found myself lilting precipitously off the sofa, like a wayward houseplant, to avoid casting a shadow.

Christmas memories from six stars of the screen and stage, exclusively extracted in the Telegraph Magazine from a new book, Last Christmas. Here, Emilia Clarke shares the touching story of her last Christmas with her darling Dad…

I would say, and I think anyone who knows me would agree, I’m more of a giver than a receiver. Christmas was always my time to shine. I would get giddy with planning, mastering and presenting someone I loved with the ultimate gift. The entire process gave me unbridled joy, from lying awake at night, going through every option and then scribbling notes, before landing on The Perfect Gift. As December rolled round I would go into overdrive.

My dad, however, was one of the hardest people to buy a gift for. He had me stumped every year. I would spend an unnatural amount of time trying to work out just what to get him; the response on giving him something would always be that of sincere love and grateful noises but I was never sure I’d got him something he wanted, or as dads often say, ‘needed’. (I ‘need’ shoes and chocolate; he ‘needed’ food and shelter – you see the predicament.)

I get this gift-giving mania from my mum, whose generosity knows no bounds. Christmas always consisted of navigating a path to the kitchen from the tree that had more presents pooled underneath it than the four members of our family (five including Roxy, the dog, who obviously didn’t miss out here either) could ever hope to open on one day.

Very quickly, our Christmas Eve and Christmas Days would turn into a massacre of ripped paper, ribbons and cards, presents once lovingly wrapped, now discarded in the name of all things CHRISTMAS. But throughout my dad never really shared wholeheartedly in the festivities. The gifts for my brother and me were always from both parents but they had the undeniable trademark Mum stamp all over them. You could tell this from her beaming face as she tried to hide the sheer excitement of seeing us jumping for joy. Throughout, my dad remained quiet and occasionally… erm… soporific.

Former President Barack Obama had the honour of meeting Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea recently, as Emilia Clarke shared pictures of their meeting him on Instagram.

Clarke revealed that there were “tears” as she met the former Commander-in-Chief and called him her “hero.”

The pair met at a Dreamforce conference last week, where they were both keynote speakers alongside Apple CEO Tim Cook, Olympian Megan Rapinoe and David Beckham.

In a gallery shared by Clarke, she and Obama were seen shaking hands as they smiled at one another.

She wrote, “DROP. THE. GODDAMN. MIC. I met my hero. And yes, tears were present.”

Another photo showed them laughing at each other, and her caption may have provided a clue as to what they were laughing about. She continued that her “terrible terrible jokes” were also a part of their meeting.

“@barackobama thank you for being alive…#Michelle…so…wannahang?” she finished.