Harry Potter star Matthew Lewis was “really nervous” to work with Emilia Clarke

It’s always fun when actors from major franchises cross over in unrelated projects. For instance, take the 2016 romantic comedy Me Before You, about a young carer named Louisa who is hired work with a formerly robust man named Will Traynor who thanks to an accident can no longer move any part of his body below his neck. Naturally, they form a connection, but not before Lou dumps her kind-of-lame boyfriend Patrick.

Louisa is played by Game of Thrones veteran Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen), Will by Hunger Games star Sam Claflin, and Patrick by Harry Potter alum Matthew Lewis (Neville Longbottom). Also, Charles Dance plays Will’s father Steven, so Me Before You almost gives you the meeting between Daenerys Targaryen and Tywin Lannister we never got on Game of Thrones…at least if you don’t pay attention to the dialogue and imagine them wearing different outfits.

Speaking on Lorraine back around the time the movie came out, Lewis remembered being intimidated to work with Clarke. She’s the Mother of Dragons, after all. “She’s so friendly and so lovely to be around and obviously because of her playing Khaleesi in Game of Thrones, I was very nervous about working with her. But she’s so talented and so disarming that it’s a pleasure working with her,” he said.

Matthew Lewis may be the only person to have read the Game of Thrones books but not watched the show

Lewis said much the same thing to Bustle, with a twist:

"I remember when I first went in to do rehearsals, I was really nervous, actually, because I had not seen the show, but I had read all the books, and I knew how important her character was in Game of Thrones. I was just like, ‘Oh god, I hope that I can bring something to the table, I hope I can try and match her.’"

Over the years, I’ve read many interviews with actors — including several who were actually on Game of Thrones — who said they’d watched the show but hadn’t read the books. I think Lewis is the first person I’ve ever heard say the reverse. So that means he was intimidated just by the idea of working with the woman who played a character as iconic as Daenerys Targaryen, apart from her actual performance.

Lewis did catch up on the show later, FYI. “As soon as I got in the room, she was just so lovely, just so approachable, so easy to talk to,” he continued. “The whole environment of the set was set by her. It was just a really fun environment — we got to come in and play around and try things and do things, and it just felt really comfortable.”

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h/t The Things