
WINTER IS COMING – Earlier this week, Emilia Clarke appeared on the Armchair Expert podcast with Dax Shepard and Monica Padman. The episode, which you can listen to here, is quite long: over two hours! Clarke covers a huge variety of topics, from why she started her SameYou charity to growing up in England to which American accent she finds sexy to, of course, Game of Thrones.
In fact, she talks rather a lot about Thrones, because Shapard is clearly a superfan and has a ton of questions. Like, itâs hard to overstate how big a fan he is.
Anyway, Clarke covers a lot of ground, but I was most interested in her comments about why Daenerys chose to burn down the city of Kingâs Landing after it was clear the Lannister army had surrendered. She walked Shepard and Padman through her thought process after receiving those final scripts. âOn one side, I was like, âHow juicy!â Oh my days, as an actress, to be able to do this? Like, flip that fucking shit? And on the other side, Iâm like, âIt hurts. It hurts so much. I love her so much.â So it was kind of a combination of that the entire way through. It was the hardest thing Iâve ever had to film.â
Clarke, who was terrific in that scene, clearly spent a lot of time getting herself to a place where she could play in convincingly. She offered up a passionate explanation for why Daenerys did what she did. â[I]f you really look at herâŠthe fact that sheâs been on the run her whole life, sheâs been abused her whole life, sheâs been dealing with the weight of responsibility of carrying her familyâs legacy her whole lifeâŠWhen it comes down to this thing of people start to betray her, people start to leave her, people start to devalue what it is sheâs madeâŠSheâs killed people all the way up until this point, and now someoneâs gonna turn around and say, âAh, maybe no.â I did this because it was all or nothing. I went all in, and now youâre telling me that I canât? So it becomes its own addiction.â
Youâre at the bar, and youâre holding the fucking drink in your hand, and you donât wanna fucking drink it, but you canât help it, because youâre so damaged and youâre so hurt and youâre so vulnerable that there is nothing left to do. Everybody has left you. Thatâs my pitch.
Like a lot of other fans, I didnât quite buy Daenerysâ flip to the dark side when it happened, but I never doubted Clarkeâs commitment, and honestly, sheâs kind of selling me on it here.
Clarke also disagrees strongly with the idea that Daenerys made the choice she made because it was in her genes, that she had inherited madness from her father. âShe was an orphan,â Clarke said, âand she was raised by a brother was clearly fucking her, literally, and then was sold like a slave to a huge warriorâŠAnd wanted kids and then realized that sheâd birthed dragons instead and she would never have them, and tried to fall in love and realized that that would never work, and became this vessel for leadership, for power. And she spent her life trying desperately, as we all do, to not be her parents, to be something different.â
I think the result of what it made her do was nothing to do with her parents, nothing to do with the Mad King, and everything to do with her going, âI have to prove that Iâm enough. I have to prove that everything Iâve sacrificed up to this point is enough.â
Then came the scene where Daenerys gives a speech to her assembled armies, another one that Clarke struggled with because of the heavy quantity of Dothraki. âYou have to learn [the lines] so well that you can act,â she explained. And finally there was the final throne room scene with Jon Snow, where she gave another heartbreaking performance. âOn my last scene, I wanted to bring her back to season 1,â Clarke said. âLike, thereâs nothing then left to do, but to be entirely hopeful and optimistic and ultimately, deluded.â
The more I watch these scenes the more I wonder why Clarke didnât win that Emmy for Outstanding Actress in a Drama, but I should probably let that go.
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