Why Emilia Clarke Thought That She Would Be Fired From Game Of Thrones

As Daenerys Targaryen on "Game of Thrones," Emilia Clarke faced a number of terrifying things. After being essentially sold to her first husband, Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa), she's quickly widowed, just as she's fallen in love with the powerful Dothraki lord. Multiple attempts are made on her life by enemy forces. And she's the mother of three enormous fire-breathing dragons (which do hang on her every word, but at the end of the day, they're still three enormous fire-breathing dragons). But what apparently scared her in real life was the idea that she might get fired from the series — something she feared due to a truly terrifying health problem.

While filming "Game of Thrones" in 2011, Clarke had a brain hemorrhage caused by a ruptured aneurysm. (She also experienced neurological complications, but more on that momentarily.) As a result, Clarke worried that she would be replaced on the series, which had only wrapped its initial season when she first experienced frightening symptoms during a workout before being diagnosed with a brain bleed.

In a conversation with Harper's Bazaar in November of 2023, Clarke was extraordinarily blunt about her mindset at the time. "I wasn't afraid of dying," she told interviewer Helena Lee. "I was afraid of being fired! I decided: 'This is not something that's going to define me'. I never gave into any feeling of 'Why me? This sucks'. I was just like – gotta get back on it."

Filming "Game of Thrones" was quite difficult for Clarke overall, but experiencing two ruptured aneurysms was an especially terrifying scenario for her to face as a young actress about to achieve worldwide fame and acclaim. In 2019, Clarke wrote about her health problems in a candid essay for The New Yorker, where she opened up about her particularly scary situation.

"The diagnosis was quick and ominous: a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), a life-threatening type of stroke, caused by bleeding into the space surrounding the brain," Clarke explained, recalling how she was brought to the hospital upon collapsing during a workout. "I'd had an aneurysm, an arterial rupture. As I later learned, about a third of SAH patients die immediately or soon thereafter. For the patients who do survive, urgent treatment is required to seal off the aneurysm, as there is a very high risk of a second, often fatal bleed. If I was to live and avoid terrible deficits, I would have to have urgent surgery. And, even then, there were no guarantees."

Clarke eventually underwent minimally invasive surgery for a procedure called "endovascular coiling," where a wire works its way through a patient's body and then into the brain. According to Clarke, she woke up after the three-hour operation suffering from aphasia — meaning she could understand words but was unable to speak in response. She was told that if she made it through the recovery, she could regain her normal faculties. Clarke did. Then it all happened a second time.

As Emilia Clarke detailed in her essay, doctors informed her that she had a second aneurysm lurking in her brain but that they might never need to address it. It was possible, she was told, that it would never burst or present a major problem. But while Clarke was working on her Broadway debut in 2013 — in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" — she got a brain scan and was told that the second aneurysm also needed to be removed. This time, however, the surgery could be scheduled rather than having an emergency procedure. Unfortunately, Clarke said the operation went wrong somewhere along the way.

"When they woke me, I was screaming in pain," the actress recalled. "The procedure had failed. I had a massive bleed and the doctors made it plain that my chances of surviving were precarious if they didn't operate again. This time they needed to access my brain in the old-fashioned way—through my skull. And the operation had to happen immediately."

At this point, Clarke underwent severely invasive brain surgery and was forced to suffer through yet another difficult recovery. She says that she struggled to maintain solid neurological function and, after a truly demoralizing experience in the hospital, her recovery restored her to her old self. In 2019, she wrote, "In the years since my second surgery I have healed beyond my most unreasonable hopes. I am now at a hundred per cent."

After experiencing not one but two life-threatening neurological scares, Emilia Clarke decided to pay it forward upon recovering. As of this writing, the SameYou charity she founded is still in existence, serving to help people who have suffered serious brain injuries repair not just their neurological health but their mental health. Beyond that, Clarke has continued acting. In 2019, the year she wrote her vulnerable and illuminating essay, "Game of Thrones" came to an end after eight seasons, and Clarke's time as Daenerys Targaryen was officially finished.

That same year, she starred in "Last Christmas," a supernatural romantic comedy set during the holiday season that also features Henry Golding ("Crazy Rich Asians," "A Simple Favor"), Emma Thompson, and Michelle Yeoh. In 2023, Clarke appeared in another romantic comedy with a twist, "The Pod Generation," and led the cast of Marvel's "Secret Invasion" as G'iah. That show didn't earn spectacular reviews, but Clarke said she truly loved working on the series — so there's that, at least.

You can watch Clarke's turns in "Game of Thrones" and "Secret Invasion" on Max and Disney+, respectively.