Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke has been keeping a fairly low profile lately, making her West End stage debut in a production of The Seagull and developing several projects through her production company, Magical Thinking Pictures. (Explaining the name to Variety, Clarke said that “[e]verybody in our industry had to have had some element of magical thinking to be able to make art on any level, to be able to go, ‘I’m going to be a kid forever.’” Fair enough.)
Now, obviously Clarke is in an enviable position and plenty of actors would love to be in her shoes, but for someone who could be booking blockbuster movies right off headlining the biggest show of the decade, this is pretty quiet.
It ends up that slowing down was something Clarke had to do after wrapping her time as Daenerys Targaryen, a part that allowed her to inhabit someone with almost supernatural confidence, not to mention platinum wigs with “magical powers.”
“When [Game of Thrones] ended, I felt like I’d been dropped a thousand feet,” Clarke said, recalling how she suddenly had to grapple with things she hadn’t had time to process when she was focused on conquering Westeros, like the death of her father in 2016. “I slowed all the way down because I had to, to gently build it back up again.”
Coming out the other side now, Clarke has started to get back on the world stage by pursuing new opportunities, like becoming a spokesperson for Clinique. “You’ve got your spidey senses,” she said. “My gut was like, ‘You’re going to enjoy this!’…I used the products, and my skin got better! I’m like, ‘Yes! I don’t need to lie!’ It’s all true.”
By the sound of it, Clarke now has a great handle on what she wants to do in life, which does not necessarily include conquering the world. “I just think that ambition for everyone looks different at different stages of your life,” she mused. “When you’re young, you see ambition as quite relentless. You win or you lose with ambition.” Now, after having been nominated for Emmys and opening up about her brain injuries, all she wants is to nurture friendships and find “work that is meaningful and impactful for me. I don’t care if it’s successful.”
It’s not the Iron Throne, but it’ll do.
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