Emilia Clarke and Regina Hall spent the TV season playing characters who break through the boysâ club. Clarke, on HBOâs âGame of Thrones,â was Daenerys, the dragon queen whose will to power has brought her on an eight-season journey to the heart of the action in Westeros. Hall, a TV veteran, infiltrates a different center of power on Showtimeâs comedy âBlack Monday,â as the lone woman in a 1980s Wall Street firm.


Regina Hall: Itâs so good to meet you. Because Iâm a rare person who, prior to this, had not seen âGame of Thrones.â
Emilia Clarke: Not a rare person at all.
RH: Well, Iâm rare amongst my friends.
EC: OK. Not rare amongst mine.
RH: Tell your friends theyâre missing out. How did you feel about that being the first role that you tackled?
EC: I was just so happy to be employed. It was my first job. I knew that being in an HBO show was amazing, but more than anything, I knew that having a regular paycheck that wasnât from waiting tables was also amazing.
RH: I was a waitress. I had a degree in journalism â I had a masterâs in journalism â but I was waitressing after I finished grad school.
EC: Yeah. You learn life skills there. I feel empowered with female life skills. Itâs only the last few seasons of the show where Iâve allowed myself to indulge, ever so slightly, in âOh, you got really lucky.â As opposed to âDonât mess it up.â Now Iâm able to fully love the textures and the feeling of playing Daenerys.
What was it like filming âBlack Mondayâ? What was it like stepping into â80s shoes and shoulder pads and the hair and everything?
RH: The first thing I start with is the hair. Everybody has different points of entry. Eighties fashion is quite interesting, but I gained 10 pounds. Nothing really has to fit. Itâs all sort of boxy.
EC: Being around such a male-dominated world, did it change how you carried yourself?
RH: Now weâre in a different movement, but I felt like â I always feel like â Dawn uses her femininity and her breasts.
EC: And thatâs armor too.
RH: You are literally in armor.
EC: Michele Clapton, who designs the costumes, is an absolute living god. I will never look as good. But itâs all corsets. Itâs all sewn in. She doesnât believe in zips. Which is great. Itâs just not great when youâre like, I need to wrap. Youâll see me with the scissors trying to cut out of it, being like, âIâm done. Iâm so tired.â
RH: I love the hair.
EC: In the last season, it was five peopleâs worth of hair. Thereâs a couple of scenes where in between each take, I canât even hold my head up.
RH: Itâs crazy because all those details matter.
EC: Completely. I love doing a lot of research. Thatâs one of my favorite things. Obviously, âGame of Thrones,â the research was just read the books. For you, this is a real moment in time.
RH: I love to do research too. I met one black woman who was a trader back in the â80s. She was the only one! They really are that rowdy and scandalous. I liked that.
EC: Was there a moment in your life when you enjoyed a good time?
RH: Never to that degree.
EC: No, of course not.
RH: Did you?
EC: No. I literally started âGame of Thrones,â and that was pretty much it. I missed out on all of it because the show happened throughout all of my 20s, which is when you should be wild.
RH: Yeah, that is when you should do it.
EC: And then I had a couple of brain hemorrhages, so that kind of got in the way of a few things.
RH: I read that and loved you even more. Did that change you in any way? Change your process? Change how you are as an actress, as a woman?
EC: I always say that Daenerys literally saved my life, because it puts you in quite the headspace when youâve had a brain injury. Walking in her shoes, I just put so much more into each season because it really was life or death. I felt so powerfully that she was saving me. I could only see her. That was my single point of focus that allowed me to not think about anything scarier than just getting on set.
RH: Then it ended up being a gift to us. We get to see all that go into her. How do you feel leaving that world behind? Leaving your dragons behind? Did you take anything from set?
EC: I didnât take anything, and I deeply regret it, and Iâm very annoyed. Iâm really hoping that the showrunners give me a dragon. I need my smelly socks. I think I did take those.
Having it come to its completion feels utterly surreal. So much life has happened in the 10 years that Iâve been on the show. Iâve grown into a woman. I was 23. Itâs been almost a year in post, and itâs taken me that long to come to terms with it. Where are my dragons? That famous line. Where the hell are they? It felt deeply emotional.
RH: Oh, I can tell that.
EC: It is very much a family. You saw for the first time everyoneâs truthful fragility coming through as it ended. Youâre putting on all this thing like itâs fine, itâs fine. When it did finally end, it broke everyone.
Itâs a perfect time for us to leave because, in the beginning, TV wasnât what it is now. Now it is, and I feel that finishing this show here is literally like, let everyone create this â more intricate storytelling and spectacles on television. Youâve been on great television from the beginning until now. Now youâre doing television in a world thatâs incredibly different from when you did âAlly McBeal.â
RH: Itâs totally different. But I started late.
EC: Was âScary Movieâ the first?
RH: No, actually my father passed away my first year in journalism school. You know when things happen in life and you are faced with the brevity of life in a way that you didnât think about before? I decided I would just pursue it. Once I was in New York, everything was different. I met people that actually did it for a living. My first job was this movie called âThe Best Man.â I played a stripper. But my first comedy was âScary Movie.â We did four of those, and I was always a little scared because I was like, is this going to be the only thing?
EC: What was the journey that you had to take to say, âHey guys, I know Iâm ridiculously funny and completely gorgeous, but I also would like to do something serious.â
RH: âScary Movieâ was a broad comedy. It wasnât easy for me to get comedies then. It was not a romantic comedy, and those comedies â I always felt like the men had the good jokes and then they had a pretty ingĂ©nue girlfriend. So I didnât quite fit into that either. Itâs always been a fight. Eventually I just had to go in over and over and audition until they were like, âI didnât see this.â Slowly but surely, people were like, âThere you are.â
âItâs always been a fight. eventually i just had to go in over and over and audition untilthey were like, âi didnât see this.â slowly but surely, people were like, âthere you are.ââ
REGINA HALL
EC: Letâs talk about fans, because youâve got many.
RH: Itâs important. They make you want to do your best. They grow up with you. Do you feel that?
EC: Yeah, I really do. Having my first experience be something that does already have such an in-built fan base, with the books â I was like, I canât mess that up. I didnât want to upset the fans.
RH: Yes. They do get upset. You havenât had stalkers, have you? Not to be dark.
EC: Yeah. Nothing too bonkers.
RH: Do they think you were their queen?
EC: I would love it if someone just rode up on a horse and was like, âMy queen, hop on board!â I get silent stalkers. In London, what you have is you walk past someone and very politely, youâll hear, âIs that âŠ?â And theyâll carry on.
RH: Sometimes people will say, âWhat have you been in?â Oh, God. Iâm not going to list my rĂ©sumĂ©. Sometimes they will say, âMiss [Regina] King, can I have a picture?â Then I say, âWrong name! No picture!â Then they feel horrible. I feel horrible that they feel embarrassed. But itâs a lesson.
EC: They should know.
RH: Iâm not going to go running up on Brad Pitt going, âMr. DiCaprio!â
EC: Exactly. But I also get âAre you my cousinâs sister?â
RH: They do that. They think you went to high school together. Then you say, âIâm an actress.â And they say, âIn what?â Thatâs hard.
EC: Thatâs where Iâm lucky. I just get to say the show. Or I run.
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