Emilia Clarke improvised a speech in a fake language

Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke improvised a whole monologue in a made-up language while shooting season five.

Director Jeremy Podeswa explained the process to Entertainment Weekly, saying Clarke did “an amazing job” with a scene in which her character Daenerys Targaryen speaks in the fictional language of Valyrian, to order an execution.

“There’s usually a lot of preparation for that sort of thing and so much consideration that goes into it and she had quite a big monologue before she sets the guy on fire,” Podeswa explained, saying the scene was shot in English for the first few takes before showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss suggested it be redone in Valyrian.

He added: “I went over to Emilia and I was like, ‘I know this is a really big ask, but do you think you could figure out a way to do this in Valyrian?’ She said, ‘Yeah, sure, I think I can do this.’ And I’m all, ‘Really?’

“Then she went off and cobbled together things that [Daenerys] had said in the past that made sense. She came back in 10 minutes and had this whole monologue down.”

Check out the clip with Clarke’s full monologue here:

“I just had to hand it to Emilia for taking on the challenge and making it completely credible,” Podeswa added. “Every single take, every intonation, and the way she phrased everything, you completely understood what she was meant to be saying.

“Then the subtitles all seemed authentic to what she was doing. She knew the language well enough at that point to make it all work. It wasn’t tracking perfectly in Valyrian, but no fan ever noticed it. She did an amazing job.”

In other Game of Thrones news, Jason Momoa recently said his family was “completely in debt” after his character was axed from the show.