Emilia Clarke


Emilia Isobel Euphemia Rose Clarke has been steadily building her Hollywood résumé for over a decade now. Of course, you know her as Emilia Clarke, but then again, perhaps the only name you know her by is that of probably her most famous character, Daenerys Targaryen.

Clarke’s Hollywood fame may have come with Game of Thrones, but she is ready to elevate her career with a new role in the Marvel cinematic universe on the upcoming series, Secret Invasion.

EMILIA CLARKE JOINS MARVEL’S SECRET INVASION AS ABIGAIL BRAND

https://twitter.com/_peace_for_life/status/1500450021703315460

Ever since Emilia Clarke ended her eight-season run on the immensely popular HBO series Game of Thrones, she has kept somewhat of a low profile. Clarke appeared in two films shortly after GoT concluded (Last Christmas and Above Suspicion) and other than a vocal role in the animated film The Amazing Maurice, she has not been seen.

Well, that is about to change in a big way as Emilia Clarke has joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

It is no longer a secret that Emilia Clarke will be joining MCU veteran Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn in the upcoming Disney+ series Secret Invasion.

Jackson will be reprising his role as S.H.I.E.L.D boss Nick Fury, while Mendelsohn will be back as the Skrull, Talos. Joining the three will be Cobie Smulders, Olivia Colman, Christopher McDonald, Carmen Ejogo, and Martin Freeman.

Emilia Clarke will be playing SWORD commander Abigail Brand. In the Marvel Comics, Brand has mutant and alien DNA and can shoot blue flames from her hands that can cut through metal. There was a video leak that was posted showing Clarke filming for Secret Invasion. In the clip, you can see her wearing black clothing with a gray shirt being pinned to the ground by a person wearing a gray motion-capture suit.

Without a set release date, MCU fans will have to wait a bit longer to see Emilia Clarke make her Marvel debut.

Secret Invasion will come to Disney+ sometime after the theatrical release of  Ant-Man: Quantumania. Likely, it will come sometime during Spring 2023.

EMILIA CLARKE GREW UP IN OXFORDSHIRE AND AUDITIONED FOR MUSICALS AT A YOUNG AGE

Emilia Clarke was born in London but grew up in Oxfordshire with her older brother, her father who was a theater sound engineer in the town of Wolverhampton, and a mother who is a vice-president of marketing at a global management consulting firm. Clarke discovered her affinity for acting at the very early age of three when she saw the musical Show Boat. But it wasn’t until she was ten years old that she got her first real taste of acting.

Her father took her to an audition of the Neil Simon musical, The Goodbye Girl, and she knew from the start she was doomed. Emilia Clarke wrote in The New Yorker, “When I got inside, I realized that every girl trying out for this part was singing a song from “Cats.” The only thing I could come up with was an English folk song, “Donkey Riding.”

After listening rather patiently, someone asked, “How about something more . . . contemporary?” I sang the Spice Girls hit “Wannabe.” No, Emilia Clarke did not get the part. Clarke was not discouraged.

She eventually got parts in school productions playing Anita in West Side Story, Abigail in The Crucible, and Viola in Twelfth Night. Still, though, Emilia decided to take some time off from acting right after her secondary school. She worked as a waitress and then backpacked throughout Asia.

The acting bug never left in that year-hiatus, so when she returned, she found herself enrolled at the Drama Centre London, going for her B.A. After graduating, Emilia Clarke wasn’t sure how long it would take but she did give herself a year of only going for roles that had promise. To make ends meet, Clarke worked in a pub, at a call center, and in a museum.

SHE LANDED HER FIRST MAJOR ROLE AS DAENERYS TARGARYEN ON GAME OF THRONES

Game of Thrones Pilot

In 2010 came the break that almost never happened and Emilia Clarke can be grateful for an unbelievably horrible pilot episode of the Game of Thrones. This part of Clarke’s story began four years prior and Emilia Clarke wasn’t even remotely in the picture. In 2006, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were determined to show HBO that George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones (GoT) was ready for the world to see.

HBO was intrigued but wasn’t greenlighting the project until they saw some proof. So, three years later and seven months of overseas filming, they were ready to show their product. They first showed a few friends to get their honest feedback.

The friends, fellow screenwriters, did just that with one, Craig Mazin, stating immediately after seeing it, “You guys have a massive problem.” That they did. 80-90% of that pilot was reshot.

HBO was already on the hook for $10 million for that failed pilot but saw something in it. Along with the reshoots, a different director was brought in, as were different actors. Emilia Clarke received a call from her agent.

Her agent explained the part, which at the time, confused Clarke. She resembled nothing to what the part asked for. As she wrote in The New Yorker, “The part called for an otherworldly, bleached-blond woman of mystery.

I’m a short, dark-haired, curvy Brit.” Emilia Clarke prepared for her audition, which she says were two scenes and read in a tiny studio in Soho. Four days later she got the call that she was to fly to Los Angeles for another reading in front of network executives.

Knowing what the executives were looking for in her character, Emilia Clarke began to work out madly before her trip to Los Angeles. They flew her out in business class. Her audition again consisted of two scenes.

When she finished, not sure how well she did, she asked her small audience, “Can I do anything else?” It was Benoiff who answered her, “You can do a dance.” So, Clarke did just that. A funky chicken and robot later, she was leaving the auditorium when they ran to her, “Congratulations, Princess!”

ISSUES FROM STROKES AND ANEURYSMS MADE THE FIRST FEW SEASONS OF GAME OF THRONES PAINFUL FOR EMELIA CLARKE

Brain trouble

Emilia Clarke was over the moon, as she should have been. Unfortunately for Clarke, the good times didn’t last. The stress of the first season (which we’ll talk about later) was big with Clarke, so she would let off steam and deal with the stress in the gym. She was at the gym one morning when she felt a terrible headache coming on.

She tried to tough it out but couldn’t, telling her trainer she needed a break. She barely made it to the locker room, crawling. She made it to the toilet where she became violently ill.

She remembers flashes of things after that, people talking to her, an ambulance siren. At the hospital, Emilia Clarke went in for an MRI and the results were not good for the young actress. The diagnosis was a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), which is a life-threatening type of stroke.

Not only is that scary, but nearly one-third of SAH patients perish immediately or soon thereafter. The then 24-year-old was in need of immediate brain surgery. And while this surgery was not fully invasive, it was traumatic enough.

When Emilia Clarke woke from her three-hour surgery, she was unable to fully speak. What came out of her mouth was gibberish. Her condition was called aphasia.

It took her a while, but this passed, and Clarke was able to fully talk again. One month later, she was out of the hospital, but not for the last time. While in the hospital the first time and during her surgery, the doctors also found another smaller aneurysm on the other side of her brain.

They couldn’t tell her if it would break but it was possible it would just remain dormant. Sadly, it didn’t. Emilia Clarke struggled through seasons two and three of Game of Thrones, dealing with her pain.

After Season three wrapped, Clarke took a role on Broadway. While in New York, she had a few days left on her SAG (Screen Actors Guild) insurance so she went in for a brain scan. It showed the growth had doubled in size and the doctors need to do surgery again.

They attempted the same procedure as before but it failed. Emilia Clarke woke up to screaming pain and the doctors said real surgery was necessary and quickly. They went through her skull to operate on her brain. This time they were successful.

EMILIA CLARKE TURNED DOWN THE LEAD ROLE IN 50 SHADES OF GREY BECAUSE SHE HATED FILMING NUDE SCENES

Emilia Clarke nudity

Anyone who has seen Game of Thrones has seen Emilia Clarke… and the lack of clothes she employed from time to time. While the finished product looks convincing, Clarke recently spoke about how she felt pressured early on to do those nude scenes and who helped her get through some of the rough ones. She spoke on Dax Shepard’s podcast Armchair Expert, “I took the job and then they sent me the scripts and I was reading them, and I was like, ‘Oh, there’s the catch!’”

As she explained though, “But I’d come fresh from drama school and I approached it as a job: if it’s in the script then it’s clearly needed. This is what this is and I’m going to make sense of it and that’s what I’m going to do and everything’s going to be cool.”

Emilia Clarke gives credit to her co-star Jason Momoa, who portrayed husband Khal Drogo on GoT, in helping her through. “He was crying more than I was,” Clarke replied. “It’s only now that I realize how fortunate I was with that because that could have gone many, many, many different ways,” she said.

“Because Jason had experience – he was an experienced actor who had done a bunch of stuff before coming on to this – he was like, ‘Sweetie, this is how it’s meant to be, this is how it’s not meant to be, and I’m going to make sure that that’s the fucking gaze.’ He was always like, ‘Can we get her a fucking robe? She’s shivering!’ … He was so kind and considerate and cared about me as a human being.”

But as her star grew, so did her stance on nudity. She now knows her comfort level and just how nudity is required for a scene. “I’ve had fights on set before where I’m like, ‘No, the sheet stays up,’ and they’re like, ‘You don’t wanna disappoint your Game of Thrones fans.’ And I’m like, ‘F*** you.’ ”

Which is why Emilia Clarke turned down the role of Anastasia Steele in Fifty Shades of Grey. She couldn’t stand that because of the nudity she displayed in GoT that it was easy for her to continue on with it. She told the HuffPost, “And it’s annoying as hell and I’m sick and tired of it because I did it for the character,” she went on. “I didn’t do it so some guy could check out my tits, for God’s sake.”

SHE WENT ON TO STAR IN TERMINATOR: GENISYS AND SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY

Emilia Clarke

Emilia Clarke’s role in GoT no doubt helped her land the role of Sarah Conner in Terminator Genisys. While the movie itself was critically panned for the acting and plot, Clarke herself pulled in some good reviews for her performance. Her upward trend in Hollywood continued as GoT continued.

Emilia Clarke pulled in the role of Qi’ra in Ron Howard’s Solo: A Star Wars Story that went through an enormous amount of production troubles that included a few script rewrites and the firing of directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. This had nothing to do with Clarke’s performance, which again was considered great.

EMILIA CLARKE CRIED AFTER READING THE SCRIPT FOR THE FINAL EPISODE OF GAME OF THRONES

Game of Thrones finale

That infamous final season of Game of Thrones. The backlash the producers received. The unbelievable character turn Clarke’s Daenerys Targaryen took.

She remembers reading the script for the final episode. “I cried,” Clarke told EW. “And I went for a walk. I walked out of the house and took my keys and phone and walked back with blisters on my feet. I didn’t come back for five hours. I’m like, ‘How am I going to do this?’”

Emilia Clarke was on a plane sitting next to Kit Harington, who plays Jon Snow in GoT, wanting to discuss the episode. But Harington refused to read it, he wanted to be able to experience the whole thing at the table read they were headed to. So, Clarke made the strategic decision to sit across from him during the table read so she could fully see his reaction.

Harington recalled as they got to their final scene together, “I looked at Emilia and there was a moment of me realizing, ‘No, no…’” For those of you who haven’t seen that last episode (how have you not?) nothing else will be said about it, other than “wow”.

OFF-SCREEN, SHE STAYS BUSY WITH CHARITY BUT DOESN’T OFFER UP HER FACE FOR SELFIES WITH FANS

Emilia Clarke

One thing fans may not care for though if you happen to run into Emilia Clarke on the go, don’t ask her for a selfie because she more than likely won’t give you one. Emilia Clarke tells the Table Manners with Jessica Ware podcast, that it’s not because she doesn’t like selfies.

“When someone’s asking me for a selfie, I want to be able to provide for them what it is they’re after. …When you do a signing thing, you can actually look into their eyes and have a proper real human thing. …I’ve just been trying to navigate how I can [interact with fans] without feeling like my soul is completely empty. Because they don’t really want to talk to you.” She prefers a rue conversation, even if it’s brief.

Emilia Clarke keeps herself busy with charitable organizations as well. She was named the ambassador to the Royal College of Nursing for her efforts in raising awareness about the working conditions of nurses in the UK. In 2019, Clarke started her own charity called SameYou, in which she hopes to bring better neurorehabilitation access to young people after a stroke or serious brain injury.

SHE WILL ALSO RETURN TO FILM SOON WITH THE POD GENERATION AND MCCARTHY

Secret Invasion isn’t the only project Emilia Clarke has going for her. After her mini-hiatus from movies and TV, Clarke will be seen first in Secret Invasion and then in two other projects. The first one is a sci-fi rom-com titled The Pod Generation.

After that, Emilia Clarke can be seen in the biopic McCarthy about the former politician Joseph McCarthy who made a name for himself as an anti-communist and anti-homosexual during the Cold War.

Latest Emilia Clarke Articles


Even Arnold Schwarzenegger Hated What Happened To The Terminator Franchise

Whatever you think of Terminator Salvation, director McG’s 2009 entry into to the world of Skynet pretty much killed the …

1 month ago

The Tom Hanks Star Wars Villain We Nearly Got

When Star Wars was released in 1977, George Lucas thought it would be a colossal failure. He was so nervous …

2 months ago

buffy

The Most Powerful Female Leads in a Television Show

2023 is the year of the ladies, as 108 shows released thus far feature women in leading roles, which is …

6 months ago

emilia clarke

The Emilia Clark Crime Thriller On Netflix Based On A Real Murder

Prepare yourself for a gripping voyage into the murky depths of crime and betrayal as Netflix brings you Above Suspicion, …

6 months ago

emilia clarke

See Emilia Clarke Replace Amber Heard As Mera In Aquaman

Digital artists have been responsible for some of the most unique and innovative fan castings on the web, often utilizing …

8 months ago

Sexiest Game Of Thrones Characters

There are a few things that we know for certain about the television series, Game of Thrones. The first is …

8 months ago

emilia clarke

Emilia Clarke Thinks The Best Actors Work In Front Of Green Screens

Emilia Clarke is no stranger to working on shows that heavily use CGI and visual effects, with her breakout role …

9 months ago

emilia clarke

Emilia Clarke Almost Killed Samuel L. Jackson Filming Secret Invasion

Emilia Clarke says she almost ran over Samuel L. Jackson while filming Secret Invasion.

9 months ago

emilia clarke

Emilia Clarke Criticizes Marvel For Doing Way Too Much

Emilia Clarke is happy Secret Invasion can be enjoyed without having to have seen every single other movie and television series in the MCU.

11 months ago

Emilia Clarke secret invasion

Emilia Clarke’s Secret Invasion Character Identity Is Now Confirmed And It’s A Shocker

Emilia Clarke will be playing a Skrull named G’iah, the daughter of Ben Mendelsohn’s Talos, in Secret Invasion.

12 months ago

emilia clarke

Emilia Clarke Marvel Character Finally Revealed And It’s A Game-Changer

Fans thought that Emilia Clarke would be playing Abigail Brand in Marvel’s Secret Invasion, but the star will actually be playing a Skrull named G’iah.

12 months ago

black panther series

Marvel Cancels Series Premiere Only Days After Revealing Release Date?

Marvel’s Secret Invasion no longer has a release date on Disney+.

12 months ago

secret invasion skrulls

Secret Invasion Finally Has A Firm Release Date

After over six months of internal delays, Secret Invasion will debut on June 21 on Disney+.

1 year ago

emilia clarke

See Emilia Clarke Model A Tight Black Couture Suit

Emilia Clarke looked great in the black suit she wore to an event.

1 year ago

Marvel Series Hit With Another Delay, Will It Actually Release This Year?

The Disney+ MCU series Secret Invasion has reportedly been pushed back from May to June, with no reason given or an official announcement as Marvel’s release calendar continues to wildly change from the first of the year.

1 year ago

Emilia Clarke Has A Celebrity Twin? The Similarities Are Almost Uncanny

Online commentators have pointed out the uncanny similarities between Emilia Clarke and Bailey Bass.

1 year ago

emilia clarke

Emilia Clarke’s Sexiest Thriller Is Blowing Up On Streaming

Emilia Clarke starred in Above Suspicion, which is now in the top 10 on Amazon Prime Video.

1 year ago

Emilia Clarke

Emilia Clarke Compares Marvel To A Frustrating Toy

Emilia Clarke compares the Marvel Cinematic Universe to a Rubik’s Cube.

1 year ago

emilia clarke star wars

Emilia Clarke Reveals Her Star Wars Future

Emilia Clarke says she has no plans to return to the Star Wars universe as Qi’Ra.

1 year ago

peter dinklage game of thrones

The Biggest Game of Thrones Star Refuses To Watch The Prequel

Emilia Clarke revealed she is “avoiding” watching the Games of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon.

1 year ago

emilia clarke

See Emilia Clarke In A Bright Red Mini-Dress

An Emilia Clarke fan page posts a gorgeous image of the star in a red mini-dress.

1 year ago

emilia clarke secret invasion

Secret Invasion Trailer Gives Emilia Clarke Her Big Marvel Debut

We have the first trailer for Marvel’s Secret Invasion, including the debut of Emilia Clarke.

2 years ago

emilia clarke

See Emilia Clarke As Amber Heard’s Aquaman Replacement After She’s Chosen By Fans

A fan has thrown together an image of Emilia Clarke replacing Amber Heard as Mera in Aquaman 2, and she looks quite fantastic in the costume.

2 years ago

Emilia Clarke secret invasion

Emilia Clarke Was Insulted By The CEO Of A Big Television Company

A CEO of a huge television company has come under fire after he made some horrible comments about Game of Thrones star, Emilia Clarke.

2 years ago

emilia clarke

Emilia Clarke’s Marvel Character Finally Revealed?

Emilia Clarke has been part of some of the biggest franchises in the world, and her role in Marvel may just have been revealed.

2 years ago

emilia clarke

Emilia Clarke Reveals That Part Of Her Brain Is Missing

Game of Thrones’ star Emilia Clarke has revealed that tragic health issues have affected huge portions of her brain.

2 years ago

emilia clarke

Emilia Clarke Revealed Her Biggest Failure And It’s Not That Final Season

Emilia Clarke may have made a name for herself on Games of Thrones, but she recently revealed what her biggest career failure has been, and it’s not what fans think.

2 years ago

Emilia Clarke

Emilia Clarke Has Made A Decision About Returning To Game Of Thrones

Game of Thrones has more and more spin-off shows on the way and the Mother of Dragons herself Emilia Clarke has something to say.

2 years ago

emilia clarke

Emilia Clarke Returning To Star Wars?

Before HBO’s Game of Thrones ran its course, Emilia Clarke landed her first big role outside that franchise in 2018’s …

2 years ago