GoT's Mother Of Dragons Tells Us Why She's Here To Slay

In an exclusive interview with CLEO, Emilia Clarke - breakout star of HBO’s Game of Thrones - talks to Kit Chua about laughs, love stories, and what really goes on inside the mind of Khaleesi.

- Kit Chua

It’s somehow not at all surprising that Emilia Clarke – the incumbent Sexiest Woman Alive and Woman of the Year of Esquire and GQ magazines, respectively – is really just a girl at heart.

Maybe it’s because, stripped of the blonde wig she wears to morph into her most famous character, Game of Throne’s unbreakable dragon queen Daenerys Targaryen, she isn’t your typical Hollywood glamazon. Instead, with her soft curves, hyper-expressive eyebrows and frequent, face-splitting smiles, it’s somehow easier to imagine the real-life Emilia Clarke doing regular,everyday things like making tea or reading books.

But it’s probably fitting that, in life, Emilia breaks the archetypal starlet mould. After all, in the oft-quoted words of her agent, she is “short, round and brown” – the perfect antithesis of the tall, willowy blonde the Game of Thrones producers were looking to cast as their Daenerys. Defying expectations, then, would seem to be Emilia Clarke’s MO.

That fact also offers an explanation as to why, as an actress, she is so adept at communicating a particular brand of inner strength – it’s quiet and unshowy, but as the fates of her on-screen foes prove, underestimate it at your peril.

However, as she herself tells me via a late-night conference call from London, strength to Emilia Clarke is not at all a question of being extraordinary: