'Game of Thrones' star Emilia Clarke on 'bittersweet' goodbye to her character Daenerys
Emilia Clarke is excited for the next chapter of her career after "Game of Thrones" but the acclaimed actress can't help but be "sad" to say goodbye to the show's close-knit cast and crew.
"I mean it just feels very much like kind of leaving home, because it's bittersweet," she told "GMA" Wednesday night at the NYC premiere of the final season. "I know that the next bit on my journey is gonna be really exciting and really wonderful ... but leaving it is incredibly sad. It really is."
Clarke's Daenerys Targaryen has really grown before the audience's eyes -- from a bride to Mother of Dragons to possible ruler of Westeros ... if the Night King doesn't kill everyone, that is.
"Like every season as a pivotal moment, every single season there's something that changes her as a person," Clarke said.
Clark added that the most "bad a--" moment of her run on the show was when Daeny started to come into her own and decide who will live or die under her rule.
The actress knows that she and her character will be "forever intertwined."
"I mean she doesn't crack as many jokes as I do," she said. "And I don't have dragons. But she does inform the women I have become."
This end of an epic run comes weeks after Clarke revealed she suffered two aneurysms after filming the first season of the show and could have died.
She detailed her experience in The New Yorker, writing that doctors couldn't immediately diagnose her condition. Then she was delivered the distressing news.
"For the next three hours, surgeons went about repairing my brain. This would not be my last surgery, and it would not be the worst. I was 24 years old," she wrote.
Clarke underwent a "minimally invasive" surgery for three hours that day. She said it caused her to suffer unthinkable pain and trauma following the procedure.
"In my worst moments, I wanted to pull the plug," she wrote.
She said she has fully recovered now.
"In the years since my second surgery I have healed beyond my most unreasonable hopes," she wrote. "I feel endless gratitude—to my mum and brother, to my doctors and nurses, to my friends."
