While many of the Game of Thrones cast members gather in Seville, Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen) is at the Cannes Film Festival in France, doing all she can to promote the release of Solo: A Star Wars Story, which comes out over Memorial Day weekend. She’s been walking plenty of red carpets and giving plenty of interviews, including this lengthy one with Variety. She discusses the Time’s Up movement, what to expect from Solo and, of course, Game of Thrones. Watch it below, and then we’ll hit the highlights.
Let’s get right into the Game of Thrones stuff, which starts up the 24:00 mark. Right away, Clarke is nervous about unintentionally giving away spoilers. “I feel like my eyes can say something…I think mainly people don’t wanna know, overall.” Although she’s not currently near the Game of Thrones set in Seville, she does confirm that she’s “in the middle of filming,” and has mixed feelings about the show coming to an end.
"It really feels like preparing to leave home. Is how it feels. So that’s exciting, but it’s sad and scary all at the same time…It has been my entire life. It was been my entire 20s, and then some. It’s been my everything."
Happily, she’s making sure she remembers every moment, although the record-keeping process isn’t going exactly as planned. “I’ve been writing a diary entry for every day of filming, so that when I’m an old lady I can look back and remember what I was really feeling. The majority of my diary entries are, ‘My feet hurt! I’m tired! It was raining!’ I’m gonna look back and be like, ‘I complained a bunch!’ None of is this kind of wistful thing I hoped it would be.”
As per usual, Clarke seems like a delightful interview.
As for how the whole show ends, Clarke claims she doesn’t know. I’m not sure I buy that, but sure, let’s go with it. “I mean, we all have ideas, don’t we? It will be what none of us think it will be, I’m pretty sure.”
Clarke hits plenty of other subjects in the interview, but that’s the bulk of the talk about Game of Thrones. I also enjoyed the bit around 12:00 when she bemoans constantly getting asked how it feels to play a “strong women” characters in film and on TV:
"Find another adjective, dammit. I’m just playing women. If it’s not strong, what is it? You’re telling me that there’s another option? There’s like a weak option? You think a lead in a movie is gonna be weak? It just doesn’t even bear having the conversation, so enough already with the strong women, please; let’s just be women. Or: how does it feel to play a female lead in a big blockbuster movie? Or how does it feel to play someone with power? I mean, God, the list goes on. I get very frustrated with that in particular. You don’t get ‘strong men,’ unless you [mean], like, physically strong men…Or ask boys how it feels to be strong."
Clarke also confirms that, at least on Game of Thrones, she’s been paid the same as her male costars since the beginning, which isn’t always the case with high-end dramas.
Elsewhere, Clarke appeared on The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast; her episode is now available on iTunes. Some highlights from that:
- Clarke discusses her Game of Thrones audition, which by all accounts is hilarious. The funky chicken was involved.
- When asked about her favorite scenes, Clarke named the sequence from the end of “Mhysa” where Daenerys does some crowd-surfing courtesy of the recently freed slaves of Yunkai, and Dany’s first meeting with Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage). She also teased that there’s a scene coming up in season 8 that could become her new favorite.
- “ is badass…It just keeps getting better.”
Whatever season 8 could she be talking about? Our imaginations are already humming.
Next: Game of Thrones returning to Tollymore Forest for season 8?
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