According to The Hollywood Reporter, Emilia Clarke (Me Before You, Last Christmas) has stated that she would rather not be seen with fictional creature again. The actress, best known for portraying Daenerys Targaryen, known as the Mother of Dragons on HBO’s Game of Thrones, spoke with The New York Times about wanting to step away from fantasy roles.
“You’re highly unlikely to see me get on a dragon, or even in the same frame as a dragon, ever again,” she asserted, via The Hollywood Reporter.
As per The Hollywood Reporter, the HBO series created by George R.R. Martin (A Dance with Dragons, A Dream of Spring) ran from 2011 to 2019 and spanned eight seasons, which took 10 years of Clarke’s Life. Although she was excited to be starting in Peacocks Ponies, she admitted that signing on to another series after Game of Thrones, especially since she had been focusing on film roles for the last few years.
“I was definitely, like… a lead in a TV show? I know what that commitment feels like,” she told the Times via The Hollywood Reporter.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Clarke eventually was able to go into Ponies with a different mindset, after getting more clarity on the type of direction she would take her career after Game of Thrones during her time off during the pandemic.
“It forced me to answer some questions I probably could have put off answering for another 10 years,” Clarke said via The Hollywood Reporter, adding that it took her quite a while after the HBO show ended in 2019 “to realize that I could try and get some autonomy over my choices, my work. So much of my career didn’t reflect my taste, I just sort of shot out of a cannon.”
As per The Hollywood Reporter, Clarke was originally upset with the ending of the series and Daenerys turning into one of the primary villains. This is no longer the case as she stated that she finally found peace over her character’s conclusion.
“I really, really, really have. 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. I have too many emotional reactions for what Emilia, herself, was experiencing at that moment in time when we were filming it,” she said via The Hollywood Reporter over the finale, stating, “Daenerys has a part of my heart. She is in there, and I’ll never forget.”