Emilia Clarke on a Near-Death Experience Scarier than “Game of Thrones”

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 March 2019

⏱️ 19 minutes

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Summary

Emilia Clarke was an unknown young actor when she landed the part of Daenerys, of the House of Targaryen, on a show called “Game of Thrones.” After an eventful first season—capped by her walk into a funeral pyre and rebirth as the Mother of Dragons—Clarke’s future looked bright. But after filming wrapped, Clarke faced a crisis more frightening than anything on the show: a life-threatening stroke called a subarachnoid hemorrhage. In the aftermath of an emergency surgery, she experienced verbal aphasia and was unable to say her name. “It was the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced,” she told David Remnick. “It wasn’t that I didn’t think I was going to make it, it was that I wasn’t prepared to make it.” She feared that the impairment was permanent and would end her life as an actor. “It was in that moment I asked them to just let me die.” Clarke was still recovering from the aftermath of the stroke and the surgery when she began doing a press tour—lying down between appearances and sipping from a morphine bottle, and keeping the crisis a secret. “No one knows who the hell I am,” she recalls thinking. “I was a young girl who was given a huge opportunity. I did not for any reason want to give anyone a reason to think I was anything other than capable of fulfilling the duties they had given me. And I didn’t know what the show was at that moment. All I knew was I had a job.” Emilia Clarke wrote about her experience for the first time in an essay for newyorker.com.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios.
0:10.2	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Thanks for joining us. I'm David Remnick. My guest today is one of the most important women in television and indeed all the known fantasy world.
0:21.0	Her resume is impressive to say the least, with credentials including
0:24.5	the Queen of the Andals, the Roynar and the First Men.
0:28.6	Queen of Marine, Lady Regent of the Seven Kingdoms,
0:31.6	breaker of chains, and mother of dragons.
0:35.2	I'm talking, of course, about Dineris on HBO's Game of Thrones,
0:39.8	played by Amelia Clark.
0:41.6	I am De Nairius Stormborn, of House Targaryen, of the blood of old Valeria.
0:49.8	I am the dragon's daughter, and I swear to you that those who would harm you will die screaming.
0:59.0	You will not hear me scream.
1:00.8	She survived seven seasons of Game of Thrones, and we're about to find out quite soon if she survives the eighth and final season.
1:08.1	And if I said it's eagerly anticipated, that would be the understatement of the
1:12.2	television decade. I spoke with Amelia Clark just last week. Emily, I have to tell you, I kind of grew up
1:18.8	as a journalist at the Washington Post, and of course, all I ever wanted to do was break a story
1:22.8	bigger than Watergate. So do me a big solid and tell me the entire ending plot for Game of Thrones.
1:32.2	Well, I mean, it's so, it's so, it's all I want to do, genuinely all I want to do is just tell
1:39.7	people.
1:40.2	It's like this thing when you're stood on top of a skyscraper and you're like, I'm just
1:43.8	going to throw myself off.
1:44.7	I'm going to throw myself off this building. And I feel the same about Game of Thrones. I feel like one day it's just going to come out because I can't keep it in anymore. What happens if you give up the plot? Do the cops come and get you? I think so. I genuinely think that's what will happen. I think that the HB or. or Nightwalk is just going to turn up on my door and go, well, now it's time.
2:06.9	Let me try a different tact then. Yeah, exactly. Wow. So in the first season, Dan Aris goes from abused daughter of the ousted king into an unwanted marriage, then she falls in love with
	...

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