The actress wanted more dialogue and fewer set pieces in the final season of “Thrones,” but she still calls the show a gift for her career.
The wildly controversial “Game of Thrones” series finale will be celebrating its one-year anniversary in two months (the episode’s airdate was May 19, 2019), and with some distance comes some brutal honesty from cast member Emilia Clarke. The Emmy nominee played Daenerys Targaryen throughout the show’s eight-season run and says in a recent interview with The Sunday Times that the HBO drama’s series finale left her annoyed. “Thrones” ended with Daenerys becoming the primary antagonist of the series. The character dies after being stabbed by Jon Snow. Clarke tells The Times, “Yeah, I felt for her. I really felt for her. And yeah, was I annoyed that Jon Snow didn’t have to deal with something? He got away with murder — literally.”
“I knew how I felt [about the ending] when I first read it, and I tried, at every turn, not to consider too much what other people might say,” Clarke continued, “But I did always consider what the fans might think — because we did it for them, and they were the ones who made us successful, so it’s just polite, isn’t it?”
Clarke admitted she was upset Daenerys didn’t get a “happy ending,” but she maintains “Thrones” was “a gift” for her as an actress and she will always be thankful she got to be a small part of one of the biggest TV shows of all time. Clarke suggests the show could have handled its final season better if it ran for more than just six episodes, saying, “We could have spun it out for a little longer.”
One part of the final season that Clarke did not like was that it was nothing but action set pieces and there was no room for character-driven dialogue moments. The actress said she would have liked more dialogue scenes, an opinion she first shared with Entertainment Weekly shortly after the series finale aired. Clarke said at the time she wished the show gave her more dialogue scenes with co-star Lena Headey, who played Cersei Lannister.
‘It was all about the set pieces,” Clarke tells The Times about the final season. “I think the sensational nature of the show was, possibly, given a huge amount of airtime because that’s what makes sense.”
All eight seasons of “Game of Thrones” are now streaming on HBO Go. Clarke’s full interview with The Times is now available online.
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