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The actors behind Daenerys and Rhaenyra Targaryen are back together.
2 Game of Thrones stars from separate shows reunited at the Emmys.
Emilia Clarke and Emma D’Arcy, famous for playing Targaryen baddies, presented an award at the ceremony.
The Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon stars’ characters have drawn comparisons.
EW Two Targaryen baddies reached across the Game of Thrones multiverse to reunite on stage at the Emmys.
Emilia Clarke and Emma D’Arcy came out during TV’s big night on Sunday to present the award to Sally Field for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie.
“In the Game of Thrones universe, Emilia is my great-great-great-great-really-great-granddaughter,” D’Arcy began the bit, which included some High Valyrian speak.
Clarke broke into the zeitgeist as Daenerys Targaryen, the Mother of Dragons, on HBO’s Emmys juggernaut Game of Thrones. D’Arcy continues that legacy as Rhaenyra Targaryen, the star of prequel drama House of the Dragon, which began a couple hundred years before the events of the flagship series.
D’Arcy continued their Emmys moment by announcing that Clarke will introduce the winner of the category in High Valyrian, the mother tongue of House Targaryen.
It all surprisingly meant more than an entertaining piece of show business when the camera cut to David Benioff, a co-creator of HBO’s Game of Thrones TV series with D.B. Weiss, to witness Clarke’s delivery.
Other actresses nominated in the category with Field included Claire Danes (The Beast in Me), Carey Mulligan (Beef), Sarah Pidgeon (Love Story), and Sarah Snook (All Her Fault).
Both characters have drawn comparisons among fans as female members of the storied dragon-riding House who’ve tried to lead but were steered toward the infamous Targaryen madness. If you ask D’Arcy, however, the comparisons don’t hold water.
“Maybe part of me is quite keen to not conflate [the characters] too much because I think that the forge that shapes Rhaenyra is really specific,” D’Arcy told Entertainment Weekly. “Rhaenyra, right into season 3, is trying to weigh up different versions of her premiership based on the advice and guidance she gets from various friends and colleagues. I wanted to preserve as many future possibilities in that character as possible for as long as possible.”
Regarding their first meeting with Clarke, D’Arcy said, “She was so beautiful. She connected with me right at the beginning, before [House of the Dragon] season 1. We met, and she gave me loads of really, really generous advice, actually. But most of that was about what it is to be one of the faces of a show like this, managing and negotiating a franchise of this size, and also advice for shooting for such long periods. Her guidance was really pragmatic and very useful.”
House of the Dragon’s fourth and final season will start filming in 2027 ahead of a premiere in 2028.
London Theatre: Games of Thrones star Emilia Clarke will make her National Theatre debut in David Hare’s Plenty, which begins performances in the National’s Lyttelton Theatre in spring 2027.
Directed by former National Theatre Director Richard Eyre, the play examines post-World War II disillusion through the life of ex-secret agent Susan Traherne. Plenty will be staged ahead of the play’s 50th anniversary.
Clarke made her West End stage debut as Nina in a 2022 modern staging of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, directed by Jamie Lloyd.
Further artistic team, casting, and performance dates are to be announced.
Check back for Plenty tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk
Set in the 1970s, ‘Ponies’ sees two widowed women step into their late husbands’ CIA roles after their deaths
People Emilia Clarke and Haley Lu Richardson go under cover in the first steamy, action-packed trailer for their new Peacock show Ponies.
The spy thriller sees Clarke, 39, as Bea and Richardson, 30, as Twila. The pair become fast friends when their husbands, both CIA agents under cover at the U.S. Embassy, are moved to Moscow, Russia, then the capital of the Soviet Union, in 1977. After both of their husbands are suddenly killed in a plane crash, they volunteer to take their place — and they find themselves sucked into Moscow’s underbelly as CIA operatives.
Posing as secretaries to the U.S. Ambassador to the USSR’s office, the pair work to find answers about their husbands’ deaths, and the mysteries of the USSR.
“We’re women, people only look at us if they want to have sex with us or marry us, and that’s it,” Richardson’s character says in the trailer. “No one, would ever suspect anything of us.”
Adrian Lester plays Dane, a CIA operative who introduces Bea and Twila to the CIA. “This job demands sacrifice. Most people are not cut out for it,” Lester, 57, says in the trailer, between montages of action-packed shoot outs, fights and chases.
In a humorous scene, Richardson’s character lights a bar on fire. “You could have killed someone,” Twila tells Bea, to which she replies “I didn’t know it was flammable.” Twila then says “Everything is flammable once you light it on fire.”
The trailer also sees the women navigating new relationships while widowed and working undercover, before explaining the show’s unique name.
In a scene in which Dane, Bea and Twila patrol near a KGB official, Dane tells the women “I’m a P-O-I. Person of Interest. But you two are P-O-N-I’s.”
“Ponies,” Twila replies. “Persons of no interest,” Bea says. The trailer is also full of intricate visuals, from rich Russian interiors to period-accurate 1970s wardrobe and hair styles.
Ponies hits Peacock on Jan. 15, 2026.
Follows the life of Constance Lloyd, leading light in the anti-corset movement and wife of Oscar Wilde, exploring the sexual awakening she experienced when she discovered that Wilde was homosexual.
When a pregnant young woman becomes trapped in an underground cave system she must learn to survive in a world totally devoid of light. But she discovers true darkness within herself when she emerges 15 years later.
An inter-generational story of families connected through shared criminal history.
In modern London’s jazz world, Ivy discovers alternate realities where her romantic path takes unexpected turns, forcing her to question which life and love she truly desires.
Moscow, 1977. Two “PONIES” (“persons of no interest” in intelligence speak) work anonymously as secretaries in the American Embassy. That is until their husbands are killed under mysterious circumstances in the USSR, and the pair become CIA operatives.
Graphic – property of Enchanting Emilia Clarke
