Emilia Clarke has opened up about her complete lack of control over Daenerys Targaryen’s arc, dialogue, and ultimate fate on Game of Thrones, including the divisive conclusion that split the fanbase.
In an interview with Variety, Clarke explained that she “didn’t have any creative input” on her character, though she never pursued it either. She felt she was “not qualified.” Yet she pointed out that showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were extremely strict about actors adhering precisely to the written script. Even minor deviations, like substituting “it’s” for “it is,” would trigger retakes.
“Aside from what I brought as an actor, I didn’t have any creative input, nor did I want any,”
Clarke stated. When pressed on whether she could have changed Daenerys’ final outcome, an ending that drew heavy criticism from viewers, she simply replied with a flat “no.”
The show’s closing episodes took her character from celebrated hero, fresh off defeating an undead army and poised to liberate the Seven Kingdoms from Lannister control, to a tyrant who burns an entire city. The narrative crescendoed with Jon Snow, her lover, ending her life. Her dragon then carried off her body, closing that chapter permanently.
[Benioff and Weiss] were “fastidious about us saying the lines exactly as they’ve written them,”
Clarke elaborated. “I was given the seasons, and I, to the best of my ability, empathized and understood and tracked every choice she made so it felt like mine. I felt like that was what my job was.”
Clarke now describes herself as “grateful” for her time as Daenerys, a role that launched her into global recognition and opened doors to multiple film and television projects since.
“I have gone through every circuitous route to get to the place that I am now, which is finally being able to be very grateful for everything that Game of Thrones did and has given me,”
she reflected. “I no longer feel trapped in it, or trapped in the result of being in it. I feel just really lucky that it happened to me, even luckier that I’ve had time to understand what that was, and now I feel firmly on the other side.”
