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Photograph by Angelo Pennetta. Styled by Francesca Burns at Smile Too. Fashion assistant: Melissa Levy. Hair by Karin Bigler at D&V using Redken. Makeup by Florrie White at D&V using Chanel. Production by Elizabeth Norris at M.A.P. Special thanks to the Gore Hotel and Prolighting.
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT — “I got really obsessed with ‘I Love Lucy,’” says the “Game of Thrones” actress. “I’d love to do comedy. I’d love for someone to say, ‘You can be funny.’” Yves Saint Laurent jumpsuit, $5,950. Call (212) 980-2970. David Morris ring, price on request. Call (561) 655-3401.
Emilia Clarke is the nice English girl who plays Daenerys Targaryen in HBO’s hugely successful pork-sword-and-sorcery drama series, “Game of Thrones.” In the show, which is adapted from George R. R. Martin’s equally huge series of cod-medieval fantasy books, “A Song of Ice and Fire,” Daenerys is one of the two remaining children of the ousted Targaryen dynasty, forcibly married, aged 15, to Khal Drogo, another huge thing (played by the 6-foot-4 Hawaiian-born actor Jason Momoa), a warlord of the horse-mad Dothraki people who live beyond the Narrow Sea.
When I say the Dothraki are horse-mad, I don’t mean to suggest that they collect rosettes for their show ponies and enjoy nothing more than a spot of dressage, oh no. Daenerys’s wedding involves a public orgy of explicit equine-style coupling, while to win a place in the dusky Dothraki’s heart the platinum blonde must, gulp, eat a horse’s heart, raw. Raped on her wedding night by Drogo — who resembles a mutant Klingon — Daenerys proves to be a tough-minded and shrewd operator, who quickly picks up the language of her adoptive people and learns how to please her testosterone-fueled consort from a helpful courtesan.
I suppose it’s fairly predictable that for a certain kind of sebaceous-soused male, lost in the medieval fastness of a permanent adolescence, Daenerys would be an obvious sexual fantasy object. Simultaneously large of breast and short of stature, she maintains an expression of piqued impassivity whether romping about naked on Drogo’s equally expansive embonpoint or watching him dispatch her uppity brother with a firkin of molten gold to the scalp.
Sadly, nothing I can say about the real-life counterpart to Daenerys is likely to lay waste to this forest of pubescent priapism. As I say, Emilia Clarke is a nice, well-spoken English girl of 24, who lives with her no doubt equally nice older brother, a politics student, in a London flat. She was brought up in the mimsy home county of Berkshire by her theatrical sound-man father and her businesswoman mother. She graduated from the London acting school Drama Centre in 2009.
I met her on a rather dull and blustery July day in the Bar Italia in London’s Soho. She had an espresso, I had tea, and we chatted amiably for an hour or so. In contrast to the ataraxia of Daenerys, Emilia’s charming brow is often wrinkled up with amusement, while her dark eyebrows are as mobile as a couple of ferrets in a sack. A natural brunette, she was wearing neat, unflashy clothes — a brownish jacket, tannish trousers and a white T-shirt, and what I suspect was rather discreetly good jewelry, although I’m probably not the best judge of these things. We talked about the prospect of filming the second season of “Game of Thrones” in Belfast, a town she is coming to love. We talked about the books she’s currently reading — by, no surprise, George R. R. Martin. We talked about her vocation for the stage, which arrived early in the form of an obsession with Audrey Hepburn in “My Fair Lady.” We talked about how she loves traveling and cooking, and how she’s always interested in discussing politics and current affairs with her — almost certainly very nice — older brother. We talked a little bit about her fellow cast members, and how much she likes them; we also touched upon her ambitions to do Shakespeare, and comedy.
I did not ask her about the sex scenes in “Game of Thrones,” I did not ask her about what it’s like to become a sex symbol fresh out of drama school, I did not ask her who she’s dating. As I believe I’ve had cause to remark, Emilia Clarke is a nice English middle-class girl, and these are things that even a fairly nasty middle-class Englishman like me does not put to someone young enough to be his daughter. So, to all you out there in TV-land who fantasize about Daenerys, I suggest you keep your grubby psychic fingers off Ms. Clarke.
I'm really wanting to see more of her style!
