Emilia Clarke Thought She Would Never Act Again on ‘Game of Thrones’ After Brain Aneurysms
- Clarke feared she would "get fired" following her aneurysms and even asked medical staff to let her die in fear of never acting again.
Emilia Clarke “couldn’t carry on” after surviving two brain aneurysms during “Game of Thrones.”
The actress, who played Daenerys Targaryen on the hit HBO show, told Big Issue that she was first concerned she would “get fired” following her aneurysms. At one point, as Big Issue wrote, Clarke even “asked medical staff to let her die” in fear of never acting again.
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“When you have a brain injury, because it alters your sense of self on such a dramatic level, all of the insecurities you have going into the workplace quadruple overnight,” Clarke said. “The first fear we all had was, ‘Oh my God, am I going to get fired ? Am I going to get fired because they think I’m not capable of completing the job?’”
Clarke recalled thinking while filming, “Well, if I’m going to die, I better die on…TV.”
The actress admitted that she felt she “couldn’t carry on” after surviving two brain aneurysms. Her first occurred in 2011 in between filming the first and second seasons of “Game of Thrones.” The second was in 2013.
“Having a chronic condition that diminishes your confidence in this one thing you feel is your reason to live is so debilitating and so lonely,” Clarke said. “One of the biggest things I felt with a brain injury was profoundly alone. That is what we’re trying to overcome.”
Now, she has a different outlook: “It has given me a superpower.”
Clarke previously told The Sunday Times that “Game of Thrones” will always be a career highlight, despite having conflicting emotions towards the finale .
“I think it’ll take me to my 90s to be able to objectively see what ‘Game of Thrones’ was, because there’s just too much me in it,” Clarke said. “I have too many emotional reactions for what Emilia, herself, was experiencing at that moment in time when we were filming it. You know what I mean? I watch a scene and I go, ‘Oh, that was when [such and such] happened,’ which you didn’t see on screen. And I think there’s something timely about the prequels and the continuation of the ‘Game of Thrones’ story coming about now. I look at it and I’m like, ‘Wow, yeah.’ So I see it with only peace.”
She added, “I’m still friends with people from the show, and I know I will be friends with these people until the day I die. So it’s had a lasting impact on my life, and it starts to become, like, ‘Hey guys, remember when we were in college? Hey, remember the fourth grade?’ Daenerys has a part of my heart. She is in there, and I’ll never forget.”
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