“Every minute of every day I thought I was going to die.”
By Colin Stevens
Emilia Clarke, best known for portraying Daenerys Targaryen, survived two rounds of brain surgeries while filming the early seasons of Game of Thrones.
Clarke revealed this information in a personal essay published by The New Yorker, where she described the events that could have ended her life. After filming of the first season of Game of Thrones, Clarke was exercising at a gym when she suddenly became ill.
“I reached the toilet, sank to my knees, and proceeded to be violently, voluminously ill,” said Clarke. “Meanwhile, the pain—shooting, stabbing, constricting pain—was getting worse. At some level, I knew what was happening: my brain was damaged… To keep my memory alive, I tried to recall, among other things, some lines from Game of Thrones.”
After being taken to the emergency room, Clarke discovered she had suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage: a life-threatening stroke caused by bleeding into the area around her brain. She had an aneurysm, a type which many victims die from very quickly. She then underwent three hours of surgery via minimally invasive endovascular coiling, which ultimately sealed off the aneurysm. Clarke described the pain following this as “unbearable.”
One month later, after overcoming some cognitive issues, including a short period of aphasia which impacted her ability to speak, she left the hospital and had press interviews to attend to and was scheduled to shoot the second season of Game of Thrones in “a matter of weeks.” During this period she “sipped on morphine in between interviews” and suffered from considerable pain and fatigue. Of this time, she said “every minute of every day I thought I was going to die.”
A second aneurysm eventually grew and, after shooting the third season, she went in for another round of minimally invasive surgery. When she woke up, however, she found the procedure had failed and would need to open her skull for an immediate, more dangerous surgery. “Six weeks after the surgery, the National Enquirer ran a short story. A reporter asked me about it and I denied it.”
“In the years since my second surgery I have healed beyond my most unreasonable hopes. I am now at a hundred percent,” said Clarke. “There is something gratifying, and beyond lucky, about coming to the end of ‘Thrones.’ I’m so happy to be here to see the end of this story and the beginning of whatever comes next.”
Following her health issues, Clarke contributed to the SameYou charity that “aims to provide treatment for people recovering from brain injuries and stroke.”
Clarke has described filming Daenerys’s last scene in the upcoming final season of Game of Thrones, and has said goodbye to the show that launched her career.
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Colin Stevens is a news writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.
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