Emilia Clarke: ‘After Game Of Thrones, people weren’t aware I could smile’
A KLUTZ. A goofball. Capable of cracking a smile. And definitely not blonde. The real Emilia Clarke steps out from the Game of Thrones fire.
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EVEN if Daenerys Targaryen doesn’t end up claiming the throne in Game of Thrones the actor who plays her, Emilia Clarke, is already a winner.
London-born Clarke was just 22 and enduring a depressing year of odd jobs when she was cast to play the Khaleesi.
“Waitressing I’m good at — to a point,” she says, thinking back to how she paid her rent during that year. “Bar work I’m terrible at; I know how to make one cocktail. People would ask, ‘Can I get a cosmo?’ and I’d be like, ‘Whisky sour? Sure’. ‘Could I get a Long Island iced tea?’ ‘Whisky sour? Sure!’
“Then I worked in a call centre for a while. I worked at a Meat Loaf concert ... I did a lot of catering ...”
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Fast forward to 2016 and there’s little chance of Clarke having to go back to catering any time soon. (Though she hasn’t forgotten her roots: “I always make a point of being as nice as is humanly possible to everyone handing out champagne and canapés.”)
Like many of her co-stars, Game Of Thrones has led to a steady flow of movie offers coming Clarke’s way. The only hitch, she soon realised, was that her options were somewhat limited.
“After Game Of Thrones, I don’t think people were quite aware that I could crack a smile,” she explains, exploding into a laugh that is worlds away from Daenerys.
That super-serious reputation worked in Clarke’s favour when it came to last year’s Terminator reboot, Terminator Genisys — Sarah Connor could definitely give Daenerys a run in the grimace stakes.
But it probably had Clarke low on the list when the makers of romantic comedy-drama Me Before You— based on English author Jojo Moyes’ much-loved novel — were looking for a shiny, happy, kooky leading lady.
Luckily, while Clarke may not share what she calls the Mother of Dragons’ “what’s that smell?” face, she does share the character’s determination ... and there was absolutely no way they were going to give that Me Before You role to anyone else.
“It wasn’t even a choice,” says Clarke. “I basically read the book and was like: Someone wrote me, Emilia, down in a book — and now I will do everything in my power to get this part!
“It felt like it was written for me.”
Me Before You is the story of Lou, a bright and quirky young lady who can’t hold down a job no matter how badly her beloved family needs the money, until she takes the only work going: as caregiver and companion to the wheelchair-bound and prickly Will (played by The Hunger Games graduate Sam Clafin), whose family lives in the local castle.
Many laughs, and even more tears, ensue.
When asked what she saw of herself in Lou, Clarke settles on a description somewhere between “klutz” and “goofball” — traits that are definitely “not part of Daenerys Targaryen’s wheelhouse,” she laughs.
The energy that’s been forced to bubble under the surface for six years in Game Of Thrones explodes all over Me Before You in delightful ways, from Lou’s wacky wardrobe (“I had more costume fittings for this movie than I’ve had ever, ever in my life ... even just trying on clothes for myself throughout the years that I’ve been alive,” Clarke laughs) to co-star Clafin “genuinely fearing for his life” when Clarke was allowed to attack his facial hair with a razor.
“He’s like, ‘You’re letting her have a real razor near me and we’re filming it?’”
Though Lou is clearly destined to put some light into Will’s life, she considers herself an “invisible” compared to the girls the former high-flyer used to mingle with.
Again, Clarke can relate.
“For most girls that I know, myself included, taking a compliment is difficult,” she says.
Which must have made Clarke’s acceptance of the title of ‘Sexiest Woman Alive’ from Esquire magazine last year rather difficult.
“Genuinely very difficult!” she insists. “It sounds like I’m being coy but I’m not. Even on the (photo) shoot itself I remember being like (she starts prattling in the most English of ways) ‘Well, you know, yes ... phwaw phwaw ... anyway, carry on. Let’s stop saying it!’
“But as I’m maturing I’m trying to strike the balance between going, ‘This is nice; it’s not a definitive trait about myself but it’s lovely’, and never wanting to believe it too much, ’cos you never know where you’ll end up.”
Still only 29, Clarke admits to sometimes feeling like her career has happened almost too quickly in the wake of Game Of Thrones — she’d made her screen debut, in the UK soap Doctors, only 20 months before GoT premiered.
The stabilising factor, she says, is that there has been “a lot of life in between — lots of lovely grounding moments”.
And strangely, given she stars in the most talked-about TV show on the planet, she feels she’s been able to find her footing largely unhindered and out of the limelight.
“Because I wear (Daenerys’s blonde) wig I’m unrecognisable, pretty much. So I’ve been able to observe the success of the show from a healthy distance.”
She pauses, then adds with a laugh: “Nine times out of 10, the wig’s the best thing ever. That one time when you’re like, ‘I’d really like that attractive celebrity to know that I’m on this show that he likes, because he’s hot!’, that’s the only time it’s frustrating.”
ME BEFORE YOU OPENS THURSDAY
JUNE 16
Originally published as Emilia Clarke: ‘After Game Of Thrones, people weren’t aware I could smile’
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