Emilia Clarke ‘didn’t know how one can say no’ to work throughout Game of Thrones stardom

Emilia Clarke has confessed that she felt unable to say “no” to work while she was starring in Game of Thrones, to the point that she had just two weeks off in four years.

The British actor, 39, shot to fame as Daenerys Targaryen in HBO’s hit fantasy series, in which she starred from the first season in 2011 to its conclusion in 2019.

During that time, she starred in a number of films including the romantic drama Me Before You, the 2019 crime thriller Above Suspicion, and the festive rom-com Last Christmas.

It was only when the pandemic hit in 2020 that Clarke said she was able to rest: “Maybe I am a born optimist but it was the first time that I’d stopped since I was 19,” she told The Times.

“After drama school I did every hustle job out there from call centres to pulling pints at Meatloaf concerts. Then I was in Game of Thrones. I did not know that there was a word called ‘no’. I was doing films and plays and in the last four years of the show I had two weeks off.”

Clarke has also endured serious health issues related to two brain aneurysms that required surgery in 2012 and again in 2013: “I just went back to work because I was alive and everything seemed fine,” she said.

She explained that it was this, along with the death of her father from cancer in 2016, that had contributed to her imposter syndrome: “I’ve had it my whole life. The brain haemorrhages and the death of my dad were deeply life-altering moments happening at the same time as abnormal highs,” she said.

“It leaves me in the middle going, ‘F***, nothing’s real. Everything’s floating. If you look at the good thing, it’ll go away.’”

When asked whether she is now happy, Clarke said that she’s spent years “sitting with a lot of pain” but has gotten through “the worst of it”.

Clarke is currently starring in new Sky series Ponies, an American spy thriller in which she and co-star Haley Lu Richardson play secretaries turned CIA operatives after their husbands die in mysterious circumstances.

The programme has received positive reviews from critics, with particular praise for the chemistry between Clarke and Richardson.