Emilia Clarke has spoken about how she feared she would be fired from Game of Thrones after suffering a brain injury. Clarke, who played Daenerys Targaryen in the fantasy series, had a brain bleed in 2011 and was temporarily unable to speak after undergoing endovascular coiling surgery. She then had surgery for a second aneurysm in 2013, all while continuing to work on Game of Thrones. “…The first fear we all had was: ‘Oh my god, am I going to get fired? Am I going to get fired because they think I’m not capable of completing the job?” Clarke shared in an interview with The Big Issue.
Clarke’s haemorrhages were said to have occurred between filming seasons of the HBO series, which allowed her to keep the condition relatively private at first. The actor has founded SameYou, a charity to help people with brain injuries regain confidence. “Having a chronic condition that diminishes your confidence in this one thing you feel is your reason to live is so debilitating and so lonely,” Clarke said. “One of the biggest things I felt with a brain injury was profoundly alone. That is what we’re trying to overcome.”
The actor initially revealed her health issues in an essay for The New Yorker in 2019. In the essay, Clarke discussed how the haemorrhage occurred as she was changing into gym clothes and left her with a pain like “an elastic band squeezing my brain”. She underwent surgery to have a part of her skull removed and was told she had a small chance of surviving. Clarke also discussed how the injury changed her acting: “I felt like a shell of myself,” she wrote.
Season two of Game of Thrones spin-off series House of the Dragon premieres on 16 June and has so far received positive early reviews from critics
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