‘Game of Thrones’: Emilia Clarke Prepared for Daenery’s Notorious Speech by Watching Dictators
If there’s one TV series that could be described as the show that’s defined this generation, it’s Game of Thrones.
Originally based on the book series by George R.R. Martin, this medieval fantasy show filled with dragons, emotional relationships, and bloody gore has captivated and even obsessed viewers all around the world. The series finally reached its end in 2019, but not before reaching cult-classic status. We’re sure that GOT will be watched for generations to come.
One of the things that make this show so enthralling is the fantastic acting and casting choices that were made. One of the show’s protagonists, Daenerys Targaryen, is played by talented actor Emilia Clarke – and she revealed the strange and dark way in which she prepared for one of the show’s most dramatic scenes.
What is ‘Game of Thrones’ about?
Although too much happened during the 8 seasons of GOT to recap in its entirety, the show’s basic premise is a civil war, with members of different families battling over the Iron Throne.
Daenerys is the final surviving member of a long-exiled family, and she seeks to reclaim the Iron Throne for herself. Although she never officially sat upon the throne, she became a strong leader gathering many followers as well as viewers’ respect.
Fans watched her rise to the occasion time and time again and overcome unspeakable horrors, but by the end of the show her character arc sadly turned her into somewhat of a villain.
Perhaps because of the destruction she’d faced, she ends up killing innocent people, which forces another character, Jon Snow, to kill her at the end of the series. Before she gets assassinated, however, she delivers a legendary speech at King’s Landing, where she burned thousands of innocent people – one that only the talented Emilia Clarke could have pulled off.
What really made this speech so impressive was that it was delivered entirely in Dothraki, a language that only exists in the GOT universe.
Clarke worked hard to deliver a speech in Dothraki, a fictional language
Clarke has revealed that she was nervous to deliver the speech, especially as it was in a language that she didn’t truly know how to speak, being fictional. “Any actor will tell you the days on set are long and then you go home and do your homework, which is learning your lines for the next day. This is learning a fake language on top of that! It almost killed me,” she once shared with Variety.
Somehow, though, she pulled it off. She said that the take miraculously went perfectly on the first try, and that she felt Daenerys with her for the rest of the day as she played the character for the last time. “That’s the only time I got through that speech without getting anything wrong, when it was on camera. If you had asked me to do it the next day, I’d already forgotten it,” she shared. It sounds like something magical might have happened there.
Clarke prepared for the speech by watching dictators
Clarke also revealed the interesting but somber way that she prepared for delivered such passionate speech: by watching dictators give speeches in languages she doesn’t speak, like Adolf Hitler.
“In giving all these speeches in fake languages, I watched a lot of videos of—now it seems funny—dictators and powerful leaders speaking a different language to see if I could understand what they were saying without knowing the language,” she shared in the same interview, adding that she was able to understand Hitler even though she doesn’t speak German. “You absolutely can understand what Hitler’s f***ing saying, these single-focus orators speaking a foreign language. So I thought, ‘If I can believe every single word I’m saying, the audience won’t need to be looking at the subtitles too much.'”
Although watching videos of Hitler must have been an unpleasant experience, it’s clear that Clarke’s investment paid off: Daenerys’ final speech is powerful, to say the least.
