MO
Belfast
She spent most of the first series wearing nothing but a blonde wig. But now she’s a queen with three dragons and a eunuch army to cover her back. So, Emilia Clarke asks Event, who’ll dare take me on?
Between takes on the Game Of Thrones set outside Belfast in Northern Ireland, actress Emilia Clarke is revealing the secrets of the hit fantasy show.
Yes, of course, the dragons that are the ‘babies’ of her character are not real. But neither, it turns out, is her hair.
‘This is all wig,’ she says with a grin, touching the silver-blonde mane that flows with queen-like elegance from her head. There’s nothing real here. It takes two-and-a-half hours every day.’
The painstaking process of transforming the dark-haired 28-year-old Londoner into Daenerys Targaryen - aka Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea - is tackled with the kind of attention to detail that is typical of the HBO drama. ‘They braid my hair so it’s like cornrows, then they tie and pin that, then glue a bald cap, then paint the bald cap, then they glue the wig on and pin it and cut it to size, then dress it.’
Clarke is one of the breakout stars of Game Of Thrones. Hollywood sources suggest that, alongside other core members of the cast, she’ll be earning over $7 million per series by the time production begins on the seventh season next autumn.
She was nominated for a 2013 Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, played Jude Law’s daughter in Dom Hemingway (2013) and starred as Holly Golightly on Broadway in Breakfast At Tiffany’s.
This summer she graduates to blockbusters as the female lead in Terminator Genisys alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger.
That said, she admits that when she started filming the show in 2010 some of the scenes were shocking, including an initiation ritual in which she ate a horse’s heart.
‘It tasted like congealed jam, with a hint of bleach. I did the occasional double-take during season one when I saw the script but now, less so. I didn’t watch the first couple of episodes with my parents but now they love it.’