Clarke also feared she’d get fired from ‘Game of Thrones’ as a result, telling U.K. magazine, Big Issue, she worried the showrunners would think she was incapable of “completing the job.”
Imagine not having Daenerys Targaryen complete her arc as the mother of dragons!
While speaking to U.K. magazine the Big Issue, Emilia Clarke reflected on the health scare that nearly derailed her time on Game of Thrones.
Clarke, who appeared on the series from 2011 to 2019, suffered two brain aneurysms while filming — one in 2011 and 2013. And while her wellbeing was top of mind, so was being fired from the HBO hit.
“When you have a brain injury, because it alters your sense of self on such a dramatic level, all of the insecurities you have going into the workplace quadruple overnight,” Clarke told the outlet. “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?'”
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Clarke also worried that the stress of the show might catapult her to another brain hemorrhage as the stress acting in front of so many people mounted.
She recalled thinking, “‘Well, if I’m going to die, I better die on live TV.'”
The ordeal prompted the British actress to start her own brain injury recovery charity SameYou, which she founded with her mother Jennifer in 2019. It also inspired the mother-daughter-duo to team up with Big Issue Recruit, which, per the recruitment service’s website, helps support “people who face barriers to joining the workforce into sustainable employment.”
“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 explained. “One of the biggest things I felt with a brain injury was profoundly alone. That is what we’re trying to overcome.”
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The 37-year-old also revealed that things got so bad with her brain injury at one point that she felt like she “couldn’t carry on,” even asking medical staff to let her die amid worries that both her life and career were over as a result of the debilitating aneurysms.
In 2011, Clarke experienced the first aneurysm, which caused a stroke and a subarachnoid hemorrhage, not long after wrapping up filming the first season of Game of Thrones. She ended up having brain surgery after falling very ill during a gym session — and was so disoriented, she couldn’t remember her name two weeks later.
“I was suffering from a condition called aphasia, a consequence of the trauma my brain had suffered,” Clarke wrote in a 2019 essay for The New Yorker.
“In my worst moments, I wanted to pull the plug,” she wrote. “I asked the medical staff to let me die. My job — my entire dream of what my life would be — centered on language, on communication. Without that, I was lost.”
Clarke’s aphasia ended up being temporary and she was eventually able to speak again. She then underwent a second surgery to address another aneurysm in 2013.
These days, the Me Before You actress is thriving, and thinks of her brain injury journey not as her greatest setback but her greatest “superpower.”
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