Emilia Clarke details when and why she would “fight back” against Game of Thrones producers on how to play Daenerys Targaryen. It says a lot about how things ended.
Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon: Game of Thrones and the Official Untold Story of the Epic Series is a new book that gives fans a behind-the-scenes account of HBO’s mega-hit series from start to finish. It’s been out for over a week, but we’re still finding terrific tidbits to know and share. For example, when talking about her performance as Daenerys Targaryen, Emilia Clarke recalled some of the times she fought back against producers when they gave her notes on her performance:
There was a number of times I was like, “Why are you giving me that note?” While I am quite consistently a “How can I help?” kind of person, there were a few moments where I was like, “Don’t tell me what to do with my girl. I know what to do!” It’s like Daenerys’s calling card became cold expressionlessness. I always wanted to infuse that with some humanity because no one’s consistently like that. I would sometimes fight back a little: “I get that she has to be steely and unforgiving and a powerful force. But in this moment she’s also a goddam human being. So I’m going to give you that and I really pray that you take that in the edit.
Indeed, we definitely got the know that “cold expressionlessness” look over the years:
Now, I find this quote really interesting because it tracks with some other things we’ve heard about Daenerys and Clarke over the years. Let me explain.
So we all know that Daenerys Targaryen’s arc ends with her having a meltdown and torching a good portion of King’s Landing along with the peasants who lived there, a turn that a lot of fans (though by no means all) found hard to believe. Showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss learned that this was where the story was going well in advance, around the time it became clear that George R.R. Martin wasn’t going to complete his Song of Ice and Fire series before the show was over.
However, they told very few people, and that includes the actors. They tried to build up to the big turn in part by giving Emilia Clarke notes about her performance. By the sound of it, these notes usually involved making Daenerys a little colder and more merciless, so we would buy it when she burned down a city. Clarke herself has talked about the notes before. “There’s a number of times I’ve been like: ‘Why are you giving me that note?’” she told Entertainment Weekly around the time “The Bells” aired. “So yes, this has made me look back at all the notes I’ve ever had.”
Many fans, including me, have tried to make sense of why the ending to the show didn’t quite work for us, and I think this tells us a lot, for a few reasons. To start, they were trying to set up Daenerys as steely and cold, but when she actually goes ham on King’s Landing, it’s in a white-hot near-tears rage rather than the eerie detached calm we were used to, so…how did those notes set it up, exactly? That feels like a mismatch.
More importantly, why wouldn’t they just tell Clarke where the character is going? She’s the performer. If you wanna have her augment her performance so it leads into this giant turn you’re planning, don’t give her cryptic riddle notes; get her in on the plan and work with her so everything comes off natural. I know they were sensitive about secrets getting out, but it seems absurd to be so paranoid about that you don’t share basic information the actors need to act.
I’m not saying doing these things differently would have “saved” the big heel turn — obviously the writing was a big part of it — but that’s where my mind went when I read Clarke’s quote. What do you make of it?
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