Enchanting Emilia Clarke

June 19 2024

Press: “I was just not ready”: The role Emilia Clarke called catastrophic

FAR OUT MAGAZINE It doesn’t feel like that long ago that Emilia Clarke was an unknown name in Hollywood, with the actor only taking her first steps in the industry in 2009. Even then, her roles were minor, with it taking another two years for her profile to reach a global audience thanks to the release of HBO’s fantasy behemoth Game of Thrones, which catapulted the newcomer to international acclaim.

Clarke certainly wasn’t alone in her sudden rise to stardom, as Kit Harington, Sophie Turner, and Maisie Williams were just three actors who found great success off the back of the HBO show. Unlike Williams and Turner, Clarke was a little older when she arrived in Game of Thrones’ Westeros, making her transition into other Hollywood roles that much quicker.

All while she was still working on the series, Clarke also found the time to appear alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator Genisys, as well as Solo: A Star Wars Story, two films that fired her into a pair of Hollywood’s most beloved franchises. Though both films failed to catch the imagination of fans, there was no doubt that they placed Clarke in a newfound position of prosperity.

Yet, not everything during this period of time was so successful for Clarke, with the actor bravely taking to Broadway in 2013 only for things to go badly wrong. If taking to the stage is a risk in itself, playing an iconic character is even braver, with Clarke adopting the character of Holly Golightly in a stage adaptation of the 1961 Blake Edwards movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s, starring Audrey Hepburn.

Slated by critics, Clarke admitted to the BBC that her time in the role was a “catastrophic failure” before explaining, “It was just not ready. Was I ready? No, I was definitely not ready. I was a baby. I was so young and so inexperienced”.

Despite being 27 years of age when she appeared on stage, Clarke had only taken a small handful of professional roles before she was in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, with Dom Hemingway being her only major feature film and Game of Thrones her only significant TV credit. Indeed, without the necessary experience and with the added pressure after becoming a household name, it’s no wonder that Clarke flopped.

Ever since Game of Thrones came to an end in 2019, Clarke has failed to find proper consistency, only finding small slices of success in Marvel’s Secret Invasion mini-series and the charming festive flick Last Christmas.

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June 15 2024

Press: Emilia Clarke Says the ‘More Distance‘ She Has from “Game of Thrones ”the More She ‘Can Quantify It’

PEOPLE – Emilia Clarke is looking back at Game of Thrones.

While chatting with PEOPLE about her new partnership with Pegasus Distillerie, the actress, 37, also recalls her time starring in the iconic HBO series, in which she portrayed Daenerys Targaryen, and how her feelings about the show have changed over the years.

Noting that it “means the world” that fans have such an attachment and appreciation for Game of Thrones, Clarke says she has been able to experience the same feelings now that the series has ended.

“The more distance I have from Game of Thrones, the more I can quantify it,” she explains. “… When I started, you don’t know what you’re doing, you don’t know what you’re surrounded by and you don’t know what you’re taking part in.”

“Now, as more and more time goes between it and me doing it, the more I’m like, that was incredibly special and that was incredibly rare,” Clarke adds.

Game of Thrones — based on the series of fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin — ran for eight seasons from 2011 to 2019.

Alongside Clarke, others who starred heavily in the series included Lena Headey, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Kit Harington, Peter Dinklage, Sophie Turner, Maisie Williams and Isaac Hempstead Wright, to name a few.

During the show’s run, Clarke was nominated for four Emmys — in the outstanding supporting actress in a drama series category in 2013, 2015 and 2016, and in the outstanding lead actress in a drama series category in 2019.

Other award nominations that Clarke amassed during the series’ run included nods at the SAG Awards, Saturn Awards, People’s Choice Awards and the Critics’ Choice Television Awards. She was also named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2019.

Clarke recently founded her own production company, Magical Thinking Pictures, and said that the experience helped open her eyes to the behind-the-scenes processes that made Game of Thrones what it was.

“Oh my God, I really understand how the sausage is made now,” the actress tells PEOPLE with a laugh.

Detailing that “sometimes” it is done “in a way that is quite frustrating,” Clarke continues. “It makes me see even more just how lightning in a bottle that was and how fortunate I was to have that as part of my experience as an actor.”

“I was just incredibly, incredibly lucky to have had that experience, 100 percent,” she adds.

House of the Dragon, a Game of Thrones prequel series, returns to HBO on Sunday, June 16, at 9 p.m. EST.

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June 12 2024

Press: Emilia Clarke Details Her Ideal Night Spent with Family and Friends

Emilia Clarke Details Her Ideal Night Spent with Family and Friends: ‘I Always Love the Doing of Things’

PEOPLE Emilia Clarke loves to let the good times roll with loved ones.

“As someone who travels a lot for her work, I really try to live my life to the fullest with my friends and family when I do have time,” the actress, 37, tells PEOPLE as part of her partnership with Pegasus Distillerie. “Those times are incredibly precious to me. So I always love the doing of things.”

Her list of go-to activities is long — and sometimes includes alcohol. (Pegasus Distillerie’s portfolio include Pegasus Vodka, the Eau d’Or Liqueur and the Orion Gin, which Clarke counts as one of her favorite drinks from the brand.)

“When I’m drinking, it’s because I am celebrating being with family and friends, or I’m celebrating an occasion, or whatever it is,” Clarke says.

“I love hanging out in the pub, but I also love going to a comedy show or going out to an amazing restaurant,” she adds, “or going to the theater or getting on a boat and going down the Thames, or going on holiday, making fun plans. Activities are always something that I love doing with my friends and family.”

The locations have changed as she’s aged. “I love going out with my friends, definitely. I love going to restaurants,” she says. “As I’ve gotten older, you switch the club for a very lovely restaurant. And then with my family, it’s more like when we’ve got a bunch of us there, so that would be at home.”

One part of her hangouts that is a necessity no matter who she is spending time with, Clarke says, is having “a perfectly crafted playlist” — which she calls “a thing of wonder.”

“When people first come around, you want something mellow, something chill, something with a beat, like feeling good music, but nothing too intense. And then as the night goes on, then you are kind of craving something a little bit more like, get up and go,” she explains. “Then, as the night wears down, you want something really mellow and really chill.”

Clarke teamed with Pegasus Distillerie to become their new Global Brand Ambassador, a role she is “really excited about.” The premium organic spirits brand was founded in France but now sells bottles directly to consumers via its website. (It also has spirits distributed in New York, California and Florida.)

Pegasus Distillerie recently launched a new limited edition meteorite-infused ultra-premium vodka, aptly named Shooting Star, which Clarke teases is “delicious” and “so good.”

“I just love the company,” she says. “Craftsmanship is at the heart of what they do, and they care so deeply about the ingredients that are in their products and how they’re made. I really value that … as someone who enjoys a drink.”

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November 05 2023

Interview/Gallery: Harper’s Bazaar Women of the Year 2023 (Actress)

PHOTOSHOOTS & OUTTAKES > 2023 > 2023 Harper’s Bazaar UK
MAGAZINES > 2023 > 2023 Harper’s Bazaar

Harper’s Bazaar Emilia Clarke is barefoot, running down a back street alongside London’s Savoy Hotel. Hitching her feathered Valentino dress up above her knees for extra speed, she flashes past, her hair flowing behind her. The photographer Betina du Toit snaps quickly, before they both retreat into the building, relieved not to have been caught by any security guards. “For the sake of fashion…!” Clarke exclaims.

The actress is clearly up for a challenge. And, over the past 12 years, there have been plenty of challenges, starting with growing up professionally on Game of Thrones, a series that was attracting an average of 44 million viewers when it concluded in 2019. The audience became so emotionally involved in her character Daenerys Targaryen’s trajectory from mild-mannered princess to the Mother of Dragons that, even now, some find it difficult to associate Clarke with anything else. Yet she has since taken on a variety of roles, including action heroines (she played Sarah Connor in Terminator Genisys, opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the resistance fighter G’iah in the latest Marvel spin-off series, The Secret Invasion) alongside leading parts, notably in
Emma Thompson’s Last Christmas and the adaptation of Jojo Moyes’ novel Me Before You.

Clarke is unable to talk about any of these past projects, due to her support for the SAG-AFTRA strikes, and is thrilled that she’s forbidden from revisiting old Thrones ground (“because I have literally nothing new to say!”), as it frees her to discuss her forthcoming independent films and enterprises, as well as her side hustle creating comics. In 2020, she conceived and co-wrote, with the artist Leila Leiz, a satirical comic book titled MOM: Mother of Madness (which she characterises as “Deadpool meets Fleabag”) whose heroine is Maya, a single mother of an autistic son, who has special powers she can access when she has a period. “I wanted to use the menstrual cycle as an allegory for everything we don’t like about ourselves,” she says. “Periods make us feel insecure – I can still get embarrassed buying tampons in Sainsbury’s. I thought it was an interesting spin – that the thing we don’t like is actually what gives us our power.”

We meet again after the shoot on a quiet Friday afternoon in the top-floor Soho office of Clarke’s production company Magical Thinking Pictures, which she set up in 2016 in order to be able to green-light her own passion projects. It is a cosy, intimate space, scented with candles and fresh flowers, lined with books and adorned with framed posters of Maya. Comfortable in a navy cardigan and cream-coloured jeans, Clarke curls up on a sofa, inviting me to sit beside her. Physically tiny, about 5”1, she has an outsize presence. She gesticulates widely as she talks, her strong eyebrows in constant motion; at points in the conversation she breaks into different voices and occasionally argues with herself, her sentences running into each other as if she can’t keep her fizzing ideas contained within.
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July 29 2023

Press: ‘Secret Invasion’: Emilia Clarke on G’iah’s Newfound Powers

“I literally was like, this is my best day ever.”

Marvel In Episode 6 of Marvel Studios’ Secret Invasion, Gravik gets exactly what he wants — all the Super Hero power he could ever imagine, including Captain Marvel’s abilities via the Harvest. Unfortunately for Gravik, G’iah gets them, too.

Though the two started off as cautious Skrull allies at the beginning of the series, by the final episode G’iah has turned on Gravik after he killed both her father and mother, along with countless others opposing the Skrull’s fight (and even some Skrulls originally fighting alongside him). It ends with the two of them as so-called “Super-Skrulls” having absorbed multiple powers from a dozen Marvel heroes and flying and fighting through the air hoping to overpower the other. And though Emilia Clarke is no stranger to stunts, this was the most fun she’s ever had filming something.

In an interview conducted in June 2023, Clarke gushed over how she had “the most amount of fun” filming this final fight scene and all the stunt work that went with it.

“There was a part of this fight where I was on a [stunt] chariot. Then I was doing all the running, but I wasn’t actually running. I was on a chariot, which was being pulled by a car. And then my favorite bit is they put me on the wires!” she gushed to Marvel.com.

(It’s at this point that Ben Mendelsohn, who was also present for the interview, starts shouting “No way! No way!” because he was not on set while any of this was being filmed, and as a proud on-screen dad, he’s very excited about all of this.)

Much of the action in the final Gravik-G’iah fight scene required Clarke to be in the wires for moments of flying in the episode, and even after filming was done, the stunt team “couldn’t get [her] out of them.”

“I literally was like, this is my best day ever,” She excitedly continued. “I’m a theme park-riding kind of gal. Give me a trapeze. Give me a roller coaster. It felt exactly like that. I just kept giggling. I couldn’t stop giggling. It was genuinely the funnest day I’ve ever had on set — ever, ever, ever. if I could just live in wires, if I could be in wires now— Oh, it’s so good. After I wanted to tell everyone, I just came back, I’ve done something!”

Through all the wire stunts (and giggling), Clarke still had to nail the Super Hero action for the scene, including landing in a Super Hero “pose” following one hard punch to Gravik. Easier said than done for Clarke, who found this motion to be a little bit awkward, as it required her to simply jump in place to recreate the action of flying.

“You just stand there, and then you got to exit the screen,” She explained, miming the action. “You’re like, well, I actually can’t fly. And I’m not attached to the wires right now, so I’m just going to have to do the dumbest thing ever and just look really mean. And then jump. That’s exactly it. The biggest anticlimactic move. You’ve been building up. Been doing all the nasty talk. And then you just hop.”

But even the hopping can’t take away from Clarke once again declaring it “my best day.”

This interview was conducted during the Secret Invasion press junket in June 2023.

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