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As we all prep for the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones, due this April, fans are learning so much about what the cast has put themselves through to see the hit HBO series through to the end. Kit Harrington, who plays Jon Snow on the series, needed therapy after his character was killed off. Now, we learn Emilia Clarke a.k.a Daenerys Targaryen, survived two life-threatening aneurysms and temporarily lost her ability to comprehend and formulate language following surgery to remove the first growth — all while working on the show. Recalling the grueling time in her life, Clarke even admitted she wanted to die.
“Just when all my childhood dreams seemed to have come true, I nearly lost my mind and then my life. I’ve never told this story publicly, but now it’s time,” she begins in the personal essay, published by The New Yorker. Clarke explains how a day at the gym suddenly went horribly wrong—she thought she might end up paralyzed, ended up in an ambulance, and eventually had to recover from the medical condition twice, a nightmare that left her wanting to die. Hit the flip for 8 interesting and shocking truths we learned about her life and near death experience.
Clarke says she felt extremely exposed and was annoyed by critics’ empty take on Daenerys:
The show’s creators, David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, have said that my character is a blend of Napoleon, Joan of Arc, and Lawrence of Arabia. And yet, in the weeks after we finished shooting the first season, despite all the looming excitement of a publicity campaign and the series première, I hardly felt like a conquering spirit. I was terrified. Terrified of the attention, terrified of a business I barely understood, terrified of trying to make good on the faith that the creators of “Thrones” had put in me. I felt, in every way, exposed. In the very first episode, I appeared naked, and, from that first press junket onward, I always got the same question: some variation of “You play such a strong woman, and yet you take off your clothes. Why?” In my head, I’d respond, “How many men do I need to kill to prove myself?”
To relieve the stress, I worked out with a trainer. I was a television actor now, after all, and that is what television actors do.
Realizing her “brain was damaged” while training at the gym, Clarke used lines from Game of Thrones to keep her memory alive:
Somehow, almost crawling, I made it to the locker room. I reached the toilet, sank to my knees, and proceeded to be violently, voluminously ill. Meanwhile, the pain—shooting, stabbing, constricting pain—was getting worse. At some level, I knew what was happening: my brain was damaged.
For a few moments, I tried to will away the pain and the nausea. I said to myself, “I will not be paralyzed.” I moved my fingers and toes to make sure that was true. To keep my memory alive, I tried to recall, among other things, some lines from “Game of Thrones.”
There was a solid chance Clarke might die — or, suffer deficits:
The diagnosis was quick and ominous: a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), a life-threatening type of stroke, caused by bleeding into the space surrounding the brain. I’d had an aneurysm, an arterial rupture. As I later learned, about a third of SAH patients die immediately or soon thereafter. For the patients who do survive, urgent treatment is required to seal off the aneurysm, as there is a very high risk of a second, often fatal bleed. If I was to live and avoid terrible deficits, I would have to have urgent surgery. And, even then, there were no guarantees.
After her first surgery, Clarke wanted her doctors to let her die:
I was suffering from a condition called aphasia, a consequence of the trauma my brain had suffered. Even as I was muttering nonsense, my mum did me the great kindness of ignoring it and trying to convince me that I was perfectly lucid. But I knew I was faltering. In my worst moments, I wanted to pull the plug. I asked the medical staff to let me die. My job—my entire dream of what my life would be—centered on language, on communication. Without that, I was lost.
After having to remove a second aneurysm, Clarke nearly lost all hope again:
I spent a month in the hospital again and, at certain points, I lost all hope. I couldn’t look anyone in the eye. There was terrible anxiety, panic attacks. I was raised never to say, “It’s not fair”; I was taught to remember that there is always someone who is worse off than you. But, going through this experience for the second time, all hope receded. I felt like a shell of myself. So much so that I now have a hard time remembering those dark days in much detail. My mind has blocked them out. But I do remember being convinced that I wasn’t going to live. And, what’s more, I was sure that the news of my illness would get out. And it did—for a fleeting moment. Six weeks after the surgery, the National Enquirer ran a short story. A reporter asked me about it and I denied it.
Recalling her childhood, Clarke says she didn’t grow up wealthy and her parents struggled financially at times:
My dad was a sound designer. He worked on productions of “West Side Story” and “Chicago” in the West End. My mother was, and is, a businesswoman, the vice-president of marketing for a global management consultancy. We weren’t wealthy, but my brother and I went to private schools. Our parents, who wanted everything for us, struggled to keep up with the fees.
Clarke forgot her lines the first time she got the lead in a play:
When I was five, I got the lead part in a play. When it came time to take the stage and deliver my lines, though, I forgot everything. I just stood there, center stage, stock-still, taking it all in. In the front row, the teachers were trying to help by mouthing my lines. But I just stood there, with no fear, very calm. It’s a state of mind that has carried me throughout my career. These days, I can be on a red carpet with a thousand cameras clicking away and I’m unfazed. Of course, put me at a dinner party with six people and that’s another matter.
Clarke auditioned for GoT when they decided to recast after a flawed pilot; she thought doing the “robot” dance almost sunk her chances & growing up, she didn’t get the ingénue roles
I read for “Game of Thrones” in a tiny studio in Soho. Four days later, I got a call. Apparently, the audition hadn’t been a disaster. I was told to fly to Los Angeles in three weeks and read for Benioff and Weiss and the network executives. I started working out intensely to prepare. They flew me business class. I stole all the free tea from the lounge. At the audition, I tried not to look when I spotted another actor––tall, blond, willowy, beautiful––walking by. I read two scenes in a dark auditorium, for an audience of producers and executives. When it was over, I blurted out, “Can I do anything else?”
David Benioff said, “You can do a dance.” Never wanting to disappoint, I did the funky chicken and the robot. In retrospect, I could have ruined it all. I’m not the best dancer.
Elsewhere, Clarke says of her past acting experience:
I didn’t get the ingénue parts. Those went to the tall, willowy, impossibly blond girls. I got cast as a Jewish mother in “Awake and Sing!” You should hear my Bronx accent.
