The Mother of Dragons was joined by her mother at Windsor Castle Wednesday, when actor Emilia Clarke and her mother Jenny Clarke were honored by being officially made MBE (Member of the British Order of the Empire) for their charitable work surrounding brain injuries.

The mother-daughter duo founded their organization, SameYou, in 2019, after Emilia survived two life-threatening brain aneurysms in 2011 and then in 2013, both in the midst of her rise to fame as a star of HBO’s Game of Thrones. Alarmed by seeing how understaffed rehabilitation facilities helping patients recover from brain injuries were, and thankful for the actor’s place in what she calls “the minority” of survivors of the medical events with “no repercussions” (she has titanium plates on parts of her skull after surgery to remediate damage), they founded SameYou to raise funds and awareness of brian injury and stroke.

Prince William personally bestowed the MBE insignia to Emilia and Jenny Clarke in the ceremony.

Jenny has also undergone surgery for a brain bleed, Emilia told press at the event.

“It’s such an incredible honor, such an incredible privilege, and the most important thing for us is that it’s for everybody with brain injury,” Emilia said of the award, and how special it was to be honored alongside her mother. “To have this near-death experience and to have gone through the sort of the darkness of it all, and then come out of it, we’re so lucky.”

Emilia Clarke first revealed her brain injuries in a personal essay in the New Yorker in 2019, saying that after her first bleed, she could not speak or even remember her name.

In a 2022 interview with the BBC, she elaborated on her health scares and how unusual her recovery is.

“The amount of my brain that is no longer usable—it’s remarkable that I am able to speak, sometimes articulately, and live my life completely normally with absolutely no repercussions,” she said. “I am in the really, really, really small minority of people that can survive that.”
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Next month will see the return of the Sundance Film Festival; thankfully, we have the first look of Emilia Clarke and Chiwetel Ejiofor starring in the near future drama “The Pod Generation” that focuses on technology’s influence on pregnancies. I can’t wait to get more new stuff!

WHO announces Film Festival shortlist and jury, including Sharon Stone, Emilia Clarke, Mia Maestro, Anita Abada, Eddie Ndopu and Dr Eckart von Hirschhausen

Entries for 3rd edition in 2022 takes total of short films received to nearly 3500 since the initiative launched in 2020

More than 1000 film makers from over 110 countries have submitted short films for the 3rd edition of the WHO Health for All Film Festival (HAFF), on themes ranging from the trauma of war to living with COVID-19. Some 70 films have been chosen for the shortlist, which will be reviewed by international actors and development leaders, before the announcement of the winners in mid-May 2022.

This large participation from patients, health workers, health activists, NGOs, students, public institutions, as well as from professional film makers, demonstrates the potential of the Festival to contribute to health promotion and education. Including the submissions received in 2022, almost 3500 films have been registered by the festival since its launch in 2020, many specifically made for the initiative.

“The success of the WHO Health for All Film Festival mirrors the great interest and heightened awareness globally in the importance of health and ensuring people are able to attain the highest levels of physical and mental well-being,” said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “The wide range of subjects featured in this year’s submissions, and the high calibre of judges, underscores the growing importance of the festival as a platform to bring urgent health issues to the public’s attention.”

The following distinguished professionals, artists and activists, joined by three WHO senior experts, comprise this year’s festival jury: Sharon Stone (actor from the USA); Emilia Clarke (actor from the UK); Mia Maestro (actor from Argentina); Anita Abada (producer from Nigeria); Eddie Ndopu (UN SDGs Advocate from South Africa), and Dr Eckart von Hirschhausen (TV presenter from Germany).
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In a presentation delivered to buyers this week during the virtual American Film Market, the stars of biopic “McCarthy,” Michael Shannon and Emilia Clarke, as well as its director Václav Marhoul and screenwriter Tom O’Connor, explained why the story of the venomous demagogue Joseph McCarthy had to be told now.

The film, now in development, follows McCarthy’s journey from being an ambitious Republican Senator to the most powerful and feared man in the U.S., culminating in a dramatic and absolute ruin.

“Given that McCarthy is such a darkly iconic figure in our history I was shocked that there had never been a film made about him,” O’Connor said.

O’Connor relied on research to tease out details of McCarthy’s origin story, such as his fascination with Adolf Hitler. “Being from Wisconsin, with a heavy German population, McCarthy had been given a copy of ‘Mein Kampf’ by one of his supporters, and came to really study Hitler’s techniques, particularly the big lie.”

Shannon, who plays McCarthy, said: “I had never stopped to consider the humanness of Jo McCarthy. I’d never even stopped to consider where he’d come from, how he was formed.”

He added: “I was fascinated to learn that he had been a boxer and that he had been in the marines. I think that physicality feeds into the strength of how he was able to convince people.

“Throughout the course of this story one thing that will dawn on the audience is how did a man this flawed and conflicted manage to pull the wool over so many people’s eyes.”

The film also shines a light of the part played by McCarthy’s politically ambitious wife, Jean Kerr. The role will be performed by Clarke, who said: “There have been parallels drawn between her and Lady Macbeth, and there is a calculated-ness to her that will allow her to be in a position of power at a time when no woman ever was going to get into that position of power.”

Clarke said of the screenplay: “It’s fascinating, and it’s nuanced, and it’s complicated, and it’s alarmingly familiar.”

She added: “I have to be a part of telling this story now so I can take some time and better understand what is it about politics that gets particular people to be incredibly persuasive.”

“We have so many Jo McCarthys around us at the moment,” said Marhoul. Continue reading  »

As a kid in London, Emilia Clarke got a distinct vibe from her local comic book shop: “No girls allowed.”

The Emmy nominee and lead of the HBO pop culture juggernaut “Game of Thrones” was therefore doomed to spend her adolescence reading hand-me-down comics from her older brother and meeting caped crusaders on the big screen, she said.

“I read a lot of fantasy novels full of rich worlds as a child, like ‘Lord of the Rings.’ That was always the place my imagination would gravitate toward. Later on, when I went to Comic-Con for the first time at 22 with ‘Game of Thrones,’ I was amazed at what I saw — almost entirely men. Later, as tides turned in the industry and #MeToo emerged, I began to look at the community through those eyes and it was arresting,” she said.

Clarke started dreaming about what a comic book might look like from her perspective — a notion that quickly gained steam. She recruited an all-female creative team and made a comic featuring what is undoubtably one of the most progressive female heroes in the genre.

“M.O.M.: Mother of Madness” will publish in July from Image Comics, co-written by Clarke and Marguerite Bennett (“Bombshells,” “Josie and the Pussycats”) with art from Leila Leiz (“Horde”).

“In doing my research, I found that 16% of comic book creators are female, according to a 2019 study, and only 30% of comic book characters are women. On the other hand, roughly half of comic book buyers are female. Something did not sit right with me in that exchange, and all these signs were telling me to go make my own,” said Clarke.

“M.O.M.” is centered on Maya, a busy single parent whose life is upended by the discovery of superpowers. Continue reading  »