It’s been almost seven years since Game of Thrones controversially ended, and one of its biggest stars has finally moved on.
Emilia Clarke, 39, starred as Daenerys Targaryen on the legendary HBO series since its first season in 2011. In an interview with The New York Times, the actress revealed that she had a “full mental breakdown” when the show came to an end.
“You’re highly unlikely to see me get on a dragon, or even in the same frame as a dragon, ever again,” Emilia Clarke says.
“It was the first time in my professional life that I stopped,” she said. “I had a full mental breakdown. It was almost as if the timing of the pandemic was bang on.”
Clarke said that the professional pause, combined with the pandemic, “forced” her to confront questions she had left unanswered. It was only after Game of Thrones, she said, that she took the time “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.”
Clarke took on the role of Daenerys at the age of 22, and it was only her third professional acting role. “There was never any time to stop and consider the meaning of it,” she said in the interview, adding that she “never had the foresight to think” she might “want to take a minute.’”
While she shot to fame for her stint on Game of Thrones, Clarke also experienced upheavals during this time. In 2011 and 2013, the actress survived two life-threatening brain aneurysms. She was candid about the experience, revealing in a 2019 New Yorker essay that filming the second season of the show was nearly unbearable. “If I am truly being honest, every minute of every day I thought I was going to die,” she wrote.
Emilia Clarke starred as Daenerys Targaryen in ‘Game of Thrones’ throughout the series. Helen Sloan/HBO
The actress is now leading a television show again for the first time since the HBO hit. She’ll soon appear in Ponies, a Cold War-era thriller airing on Peacock on Jan. 15. Clarke stars in the series alongside Haley Lu Richardson, of The White Lotus fame. Clarke told The New York Times that she was initially apprehensive to take this kind of spotlight again: “I was definitely, like… a lead in a TV show? I know what that commitment feels like.”
She added that she’s done with the fantasy genre after spending nine years of her life on it.
“You’re highly unlikely to see me get on a dragon,” she said, “Or even in the same frame as a dragon, ever again.”
