Emilia Clarke reassesses Game of Thrones: “Daenerys has a part of my heart”

Hard as it is to believe, it’s been two years since the end of Game of Thrones, two years since Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) took wing on Drogon and burned down the city of King’s Landing, only for Jon Snow to turn around after and kill her before she could do the same to the rest of Westeros.

At the time, the ending was met with a lot of discontent, and Clarke understands their concerns even if she remains committed to her arc. As she explained to The Hollywood Reporter in a recent interview, she’s a bit too close to the whole thing to see every point of view, and probably always will be. “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,” she laughed. “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.”

"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?” (Laughs.) You start to see it from that point of view. Daenerys has a part of my heart. She is in there, and I’ll never forget. I can’t remember who I was talking to, but they were like, “Oh my God, when you say ‘she,’ you’re talking about Daenerys.” (Laughs.) And I was like, “Yeah! Because she’s a whole person. She’s got her own life that I explore.” So I think that there’s the show, the impact of the show, the impact of the show on me, personally and professionally, and the zeitgeist-iness of it. And then there’s Daenerys. So that’s my own private little space that I don’t need to make peace with because it’s just a beautiful memory. It’s just a beautiful memory."

So Clarke is moving on from Daenerys, while also acknowledging that there’s a part of her that will never move on, which is lovely. In fact, Daenerys had something of an influence on her latest project: a three-issue comic book series called M.O.M.: Mother of Madness.

How Daenerys Targaryen influenced Emilia Clarke’s new comic

Mother of Madness is about Maya, a scientist, single mother and superhero. And if you see the title and immediately think “Mother of Dragons” or “Mad Queen,” you’re not just imagining things. “It didn’t come out of nowhere,” Clarke said.

"I wanted Maya to be a single mother; I wanted that first and foremost. And I like coming up with names; I name everything. It’s like a weird twitch. My car is called Tallulah, and it’s an alliteration. So I was thinking about it, and then I suddenly was like, “(Gasps.) That’s it! Oh my God, and M.O.M. stands for… (Gasps.) Oh yeah!” So I’m not going to say I’m Jenny from the Block, but it’s an acknowledgment of how I’m able to give this beautiful fanbase this other thing that I did because they supported me and gave me the props when I was doing [Game of Thrones]. And also, [Game of Thrones showrunners] David [Benioff] and Dan [D.B Weiss] made me a necklace once for surviving a brain hemorrhage, if I’m really remembering this correctly. (Laughs.) Anyway, it said “M.O.D” on it, and my dad forever was like, “Why are you wearing a Ministry of Defense necklace?” He just couldn’t get his head around it. (Laughs.) So there’s a bunch of reasons why Mother of Madness made sense, but when I was coming up with ideas, I jokingly was like, “Well, I mean, it could be…” And then I was like, “Do you know what? Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s have that be it.”"

See what we mean about leaving Game of Thrones behind while still carrying it with you?

The first issue of M.O.M.: Mother of Madness comes out on July 21.

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