The Breaker of Chains
Emilia Clarke is not only a Breaker of Chains, but the Mother of Dragons as well in her role in Game of Thrones. This strong and fierce character leads into her real life just the same as Clarke has battled health issues and jumped many hurdles to get to where she is today—all while never giving up. Clarke has certainly lived up to her prestigious titles!
Imagine working your whole life towards your dream, and once you achieve it, it’s almost immediately threatened to be taken away from you. That is exactly what happened to Emilia Clarke after landing her first big role on Game of Thrones. Prior to that, she had been working three jobs to make ends meet, and had been cast in a TV movie and a small TV series. She made a promise to herself to accept only big roles from there on out—she was tired of small, unimportant castings. She had just graduated from The Drama Centre London, a renowned school that counts Tom Hardy and Colin Firth as alumni, when her agent informed her of auditions for the new HBO show, Game of Thrones. It’s based off of George R.R. Martin’s best-selling book series A Song of Ice and Fire—a fact that Clarke took into consideration. To prepare for the role, she read short summaries of the books on Google and learned the lines that she would have to read for her audition.
Through nerves, she got on a plane and flew to Los Angeles to read for the HBO executives. The role had called for a tall, blonde, mysterious woman, and Clarke, a 5′ 2″, brown haired, and curvy woman, was taking a risk in ignoring the qualifications. But that was something she was willing to do. When she read in front of an auditorium full of execs and producers, she nervously asked if there was anything else she could do to win them over. “You can do a dance!” David Benioff, the co-creator of the show, playfully suggested, and not wanting to disappoint, Clarke obliged, breaking out into a full robot and chicken dance. Needless to say, her personality and acting skills won over the room, and she got the part! This was a huge victory for Emilia, who up until her role as Daenerys Targaryen, had little to no professional acting experience.
But for Clarke, the struggle to the top was unfortunately, far from behind her. After filming Season 1 of GoT, she began to work out intensely, completing sessions with her trainer weekly. It was during one of these sessions in February of 2011, that she began to feel a strong headache come on, with a pain so intense that she felt as if she had to force herself through her exercises. Next thing she knew, she was crouched over a toilet in the gym bathroom, vomiting and feeling a stabbing pain in her head. She didn’t know how, but she knew that she was suffering from brain damage. In an attempt to keep her brain active, she miraculously found the strength and concentration to stretch her toes and fingers, and try to remember some GoT lines. “… very, very, very quickly I realized I couldn’t stand and I couldn’t walk. And in that moment, I knew I was being brain-damaged,” Clarke says as she recounts the painful memory. She was soon rushed to the hospital, and after receiving an MRI brain scan, it was revealed that she was suffering from a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH)—an aneurysm, and a life-threatening type of stroke. She would have to undergo immediate surgery to survive. Through a minimally invasive type of brain surgery that lasted three hours, the doctors were able to successfully save her. She remained in the hospital for a month as she recovered. She suffered briefly from aphasia, a condition in which you can’t understand or express speech, a result of the trauma her brain had experienced.
After being omitted from the hospital, she went on to continue to film GoT. Season 2 was just beginning, and she was also completing interviews for the incredible reception that Season 1 had gotten, but she felt terrible. The surgery had left her exhausted and weak, but she went on, pushing herself to finish not only Season 2, but Season 3 as well. Then, in 2013, two years after her original aneurysm, another complication arose.
With Season 3 under wraps, Clarke took on other projects. She scored the part of Holly Golightly in a remake of Breakfast at Tiffany’s for Broadway, and was in New York for the play when she had to go in for a routine brain scan. The doctors spotted something terrifying: a growth on her brain. Clarke, trying to keep herself calm, agreed to do the surgery and went under, thinking that it would go smoothly like last time. Unfortunately, things did not go as smoothly as she or the doctors had hoped. The minimally invasive surgery had failed, and now the doctors would have to go through her skull if they wanted to salvage any last chance of her survival. Without wasting time, they woke her to get her approval, and through lots of screaming and pain, Clarke approved.
The surgery was completed, and Clarke was alive and well, though her recuperation would be painful. She spent another month in the hospital as she got better, going through panic attacks and periods of hopelessness. She thought she wouldn’t live, or that her brain wouldn’t heal and her career would be over. “I was like, ‘What if something has short-circuited in my brain and I can’t act anymore?’ I mean, literally it’s been my reason for living for a very long time!” Clarke admitted. But much like her GoT character, Daenerys Targaryen, she pulled through. She broke through the chains that bound her and rose above them to become stronger, even more motivated, and just overall, grateful to be here.
“I definitely went through a period of being down… but then you go on set and you play a badass and you walk through fire, and that became the thing that just saved me from considering my own mortality,” Clarke admitted about her portrayal of Daenerys on set.
Now, Emilia is helping people who have gone through experiences like hers with a charity she helped start: SameYou. It aids in supporting treatment for people recovering from brain injuries and strokes. sameyou.org
In addition to her charity, Clarke is busy in a ton of other ways too! Since her full recovery, she’s thrown herself back into Game of Thrones. The last season of the series aired last month in May to an amazing reception. Fans were hosting GoT parties at their homes, and spreading love on social media. It’s the end of an era for Clarke, but she’s excited to move on to the next big thing. Currently, she’s slated to star in an Action/Crime movie called Above Suspicion, coming out this year, and a Rom-Com called Last Christmas, set to arrive in November. No matter what she does, it’s clear that Emilia will shine. With her confidence and faith in herself and her capabilities, she’s unstoppable. It’s much like her GoT character’s quote in Season 7 Episode 3: “Do you know what kept me standing through all those years in exile? Faith. Not in any gods. Not in myths and legends. In myself. In Daenerys Targaryen.”
By Selene Rivera