Emilia Clarke’s recent comments about reading a harsh critique of her handling of the Dothraki language in Game of Thrones have the show's linguist himself speaking up!
Among the many challenges when Game of Thrones was being made was creating the Dothraki language. While it was easy for George R.R. Martin to write about characters speaking that tongue in the novels, the TV show had to bring it to life, along with other languages.
Appearing on Late Night With Seth Meyers to promote her new series PONIES, Emilia Clarke addressed having to learn the language while playing Daenerys Targaryen on Game of Thrones, with Clarke recalling that she’d read linguist David J. Peterson giving a harsh assessment of her pronunciation.
“The creator of the language, I read in an article, said that I sucked at Dothraki," Clarke said. "And I was like, ‘What? Bro!’ It’s not real! It’s not a real language! I can’t suck at it because me saying it on the TV, that’s how it goes. That’s the language…I was so hurt and then really pissed.”
That sounds like a serious charge, but Peterson himself has quickly clarified he wasn’t being insulting at all. In a statement to Entertainment Weekly, the linguist made it clear that he respected Clarke’s mastery of his crafted language.
“I think Emilia may have misunderstood what I said, because I've never criticized her Dothraki," he said. "Why would I? Her character was never supposed to speak it like a first language, so she never had to be good at it.”
Peterson’s words continued to praise Clarke and how important this language was to her character and performance.
Why Dothraki is so important in Game of Thrones
Peterson pointed out that several of the other actors, like Jason Momoa, who played Khal Drogo, along with Steven Cole (Kovarro) and others, had to sound solid with the language as they all played Dotharki who were fluent in it since birth. In contrast, Daenerys was an outsider who had to learn the language over time, and Peterson said that was “built into” the plot.
“Criticizing any imperfections in her Dothraki performance would be like criticizing Colin Firth for stuttering in The King's Speech. It would be entirely missing the point," Peterson explained. "In fact, grammatical and punctuation errors were built into many of her Dothraki lines — and these were included in the MP3s I recorded for her — for this very purpose. No, Emilia Clarke did a fine job with Dothraki, in that she was portraying a character who, through incredible hardship, is forced to learn a language she's never heard before and eventually becomes functionally fluent in the manner of a non-native speaker — and in a relatively short amount of time.”
Peterson also praised Clarke’s expertise at High Valyrian as being “one of my cherished memories from the series.” So despite what Clarke may have thought, Peterson holds her in high regard for how well she mastered this complex tongue for a fantastic character.
Game of Thrones is streaming on HBO MAX.