khaleesi in H-Town
5 things we learned about Game of Thrones stars Emilia Clarke and Nathalie Emmanuel at Houston's Comicpalooza
As people were packing the George R. Brown Convention Center for Comicpalooza on a rainy Saturday, May 11, making sure their cosplay gear wasn’t getting completely soaked, a huge but respectful crowd convened in the third floor General Assembly Hall to see Emilia Clarke and Nathalie Emmanuel, two of the revered, British stars from HBO’s monster hit Game of Thrones.
Moderator Courtney Zavala, host of KPRC’s daytime show Houston Life, didn't ask about the coffee cup from last week’s ep; she instead focused on Emmanuel and Clarke and their revered characters — slave-turned-personal adviser Missandei (R.I.P.) and Daenerys Targaryen, the big, bad momma herself. At one point, they talked about Clarke’s trademark eyebrows. Here's what we learned.
Ride or die girls
Clarke and Emmanuel are straight-up, ride-or-die, day-one chicks, discussing how they bonded when they shot in Morocco. When Emmanuel recalled a time when a revealing outfit she wore got unwarranted attention from some disrespectful gents, Clarke showed why she’s the Mother of Dragons and told them to knock it off.
Humble starts
They also discussed how getting their now-iconic parts took them out of their mundane, day-to-day jobs and changed their lives immensely. Emmanuel was working in retail (“I had a mortgage,” she divulged) while Clarke had a museum job that was apparently so strict, when she got the role of Targaryen, she had to stand on a toilet in a bathroom stall (or “the loo,” as she adorably called it) so superiors wouldn’t she see was in there changing her damn life.
Khaleesi the baller
Clarke has been enjoying herself in the past couple of days she’s been in Houston. She even attended the Rockets-Warriors game (“It wasn't just my first NBA game — it was my first game!” she exclaimed), where Beyoncé and Jay-Z were sitting not too far away.
Dragon Queen loves Queen Bey
Beyoncé was also a topic of conversation during the panel, as Clarke said that Queen Bey usually pops up in any “Dany playlist” and both she and Emmanuel recited a line from “Diva.” (Here’s that line.) We also learned that Clarke has a knack for quoting rap lyrics — like Ludacris’s “What’s Your Fantasy” — but as the Queen of England.
What's next?
As someone who has had to act on multi-segmented, mechanical contraptions pretending to be dragons, usually filming for a week for just 30 seconds of dragon-riding screen time, you can hardly blame Clarke for wanting to say bye-bye to Thrones. She confirmed this when Zavala asked a question from a social-media fan about the possibility of reviving Targaryen after the show wraps up its eighth and final season in a couple of weeks. (She also said she especially wouldn’t do it if longtime showrunners David Benoiff and D.B. Weiss aren’t involved.) Emmanuel has also moved on, as she announced she recently wrapped up work on Hulu’s Four Weddings and a Funeral miniseries.
But no matter where they end up, it seemed quite obvious during this panel that Clarke and Emmanuel will always have each other’s back.
