Just before the premiere of the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones, Emilia Clarke revealed that she’d struggled with health during the earlier seasons of the show. You’d never know it to look at her in interviews, where she’s vibrant and upbeat, or onscreen, where she blew us away with her powerful performance as Daenerys Targaryen, but Clarke suffered from brain aneurysms early in the show’s run. Speaking recently on Jessie Ware’s Table Manners podcast, she admitted that she feared her health problems might get her fired from the show altogether.
Clarke said that, at first, she kept her condition from the show’s producers, letting them know what had happened only after she was getting back on her feet. “With the first one, I couldn’t let them know what had happened until I knew I wasn’t going to die,” she said. “So it took us three weeks to be like, ‘Sorry for not answering the old emails. I’ve just been a bit, you know… I’m fine! By the way, everything’s great. I’m totally fine. I’m going to be back to work, nothing wrong’s with me. I’m all good!’”
I just was, and consistently, so scared of being fired for whatever reason. So I was just like… that was just me, more than [them]. I had no idea how taken care of I was.
Obviously, Clarke wasn’t fired, and went on to turn in seasons of Emmy-worthy acting. It’s a testament to her own resilience that she was able to capture Dany so well even while she was dealing with all of this. Still, that she felt anxiety over potentially being fired at all goes to show how common that kind of stress is when medical concerns are in the picture, even for stars of major shows like Game of Thrones.
And her medical issues aren’t the only thing that have caused Clarke stress during her time on Thrones. Elsewhere during the podcast, she described an experience that inspired her to rethink how she interacts with fans. “I was genuinely walking through an airport and I suddenly started having what I can only believe to be a panic attack brought on by complete exhaustion,” she remembered. “I was on my own, I was on the phone to my mum saying, ‘I feel like I can’t breathe, I don’t know what’s going on.’ I’m there and the tears are coming out. I’m crying and crying, this guy’s like, ‘Can I get a selfie?’ And I was like, ‘I can’t breathe, I’m really sorry. Just having a minute.’ It was after a few moments like that where I was like, ‘I don’t know how to do this.’”
So I started to say, “I’m not going to take a photo but I will sign something.” When you do that you have to have an interaction with that person, as opposed to someone just going, “Oi, give us a selfie, goodbye.” It turns into, “Right, what’s your name? Who am I making it out to?” Then you have a chat and you’re actually having a truthful human-to-human thing, as opposed to it being this other thing that probably isn’t nice for them and isn’t that nice for you. When someone asks for a selfie, I want to be able to provide for them what they’re after.
As she goes on to the rest of her career, it’s probably a good idea to find a way of interacting with fans that works for everybody, her included. “I signed up for it, I knew what was going on,” Clarke said. “I’m just trying to navigate how I can do it without feeling like my soul is completely empty, because they don’t really want to talk to you.”
We wish Clarke the best in her career going forward! Apart from movies and TV, she’ll also be making her West End debut in The Seagull in March.
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h/t Digital Spy, Metro
