Mother of dragons now a spy

For the first time since the hit HBO fantasy series Game Of Thrones ended in 2019, Emilia Clarke is playing the lead in a television series.

- Imogen West-Knights

In the Cold War-era drama Ponies, which is showing on HBO Max, she stars as Bea, the wife of an intelligence agent who abruptly becomes a spy herself.

But this time, it feels different. In fact, Clarke said in an interview in London in December, back when she was playing Daenerys Targaryen in Game Of Thrones, she did not really have time to reflect on how the experience felt at all.

It was only her third professional role and, at 22, it made her one of the most famous actresses in the world. “There was never any time to stop and consider the meaning of it,” she said. “I never had the foresight to think, ‘You’re going to want to take a minute.”

Since then, Clarke, now 39, has starred as Nina in a stage production of The Seagull in London, her home town, and appeared in movies in a variety of genres: romcoms, a Christmas movie, sci-fi, a children's film.

No more fantasy, though. She is finished with that. “You're highly unlikely to see me get on a dragon, or even in the same frame as a dragon, ever again,” she said.