Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke may have impressed fans with her acting while playing Mother of Dragons Daenerys Targaryen but it turns out that she also mastered the show’s fictional language of Valyrian even better than you might have thought.
You may remember that menacing scene during season five, episode five, ‘Kill the Boy’, in which Daenerys threatened three Meereenese noblemen who she suspected may have been conspiring against her, before feeding one of them to her dragons.
The scene saw Daenerys deliver a powerful speech about not giving up on your children (or dragons) in Valyrian, but what you probably don’t know is that actress Clarke actually improvised all of her dialogue with only 10 minutes notice.
Home Box Office (HBO)
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One of the show’s directors Jeremy Podeswa revealed the secret in a new book about the making of the HBO series, Fire Cannot Kill A Dragon, confirming that the scene was originally shot entirely in English before things were changed on set.
“(Showrunners) David Benioff and Dan Weiss came down – they were watching the scene being shot – and they said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if the scene was in Valyrian?'” he said (quotes via Entertainment Weekly).
Podeswa agreed that it could make the scene even more exciting, but the problem was that the show’s Valyrian and Dothraki dialogue is usually prepared months in advance, with the actors given time to practice the lines.
But when the director approached Clarke with the idea, she wasn’t at all fazed by the sudden change and actually came up with the lines herself.
HBO
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“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,” he said.
“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.”
In the final version of the scene, which you can watch here, Daenerys sounds particularly menacing and you wouldn’t be able to tell that Clarke had just made up her lines a few minutes ago (unless you invented Valyrian, maybe).
Amazon / Dutton Books
“I just had to hand it to Emilia for taking on the challenge and making it completely credible,” Podeswa said. “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.”
It seems that when you’re the Mother of Dragons, you really are unstoppable.
Game of Thrones seasons 1-8 are available on DVD and Blu-ray, and you can stream the show via NOW TV.
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