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.
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In the midst of Game of Thrones, the star behind Daenerys suffered two life-threatening aneurysms: “If I am truly being honest, every minute of every day I thought I was going to die.”
There’s a growing trend among some of the most powerful women in entertainment. Rather than following the traditional celebrity-interview path, stars like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé are increasingly deciding to tell their stories on their own terms and in their own words. So it seems fitting that Emilia Clarke—the star of one of the world’s biggest TV shows—should do the same in the weeks leading up to the final season of Game of Thrones.
In a personal essay for The New Yorker, the notoriously private Clarke—who has kept mum about her relationships, and largely spends her time out of the limelight with her non-famous childhood friends—took the occasion of this ending to open up about a dire medical emergency that nearly killed her, just as the biggest opportunity of her life was getting started.
In her essay, Clarke sets the stage for the subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH)—“a life-threatening type of stroke” that caused her to collapse between Seasons 1 and 2 of Game of Thrones—by talking about the stress and strain she felt vaulting from being an unknown to having the spotlight put on her: “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.” The nudity required of Clarke in the first few seasons of the show left her feeling especially vulnerable: “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?’” she writes.
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Listen: David Remnick interviews Emilia Clarke on The New Yorker Radio Hour
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.
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