The Best Time Daenerys Targaryen Ever Broke Character On Game Of Thrones
"Game of Thrones" is such a serious show. The stakes are always life and death, not just for individual characters but for entire groups of people, so the actors deliver the dialogue in hushed, grave tones or impassioned yells. Plus, there's the expense and regal opulence of it all. You watch the show, and you know you're looking at thousands of dollars-per-second. Which is why the show's blooper reels are so entertaining. When the actors mess up or things go wrong, you're seeing humanity and levity breaking through the high pressure of the show's content and production.
No one is under more pressure on the show than Daenerys Targaryen. The Breaker of Chains is trying to liberate all the oppressed people of Essos and Westeros, and completely overturn the established social order by installing herself as queen. It's very intense stuff. So it's extra funny when Emilia Clarke breaks character and laughs at a flubbed line, or goofs off between takes while wearing imperial attire. Some of the best moments in the show's blooper reels are when Clarke's playful personality comes out.
There are a lot of great Daenerys Targaryen moments in the blooper reels, like when she vibes to Grey Worm actor Jacob Anderson singing "Lean on Me." But the best is when she messes up her Dothraki dialogue.
Daenerys Stormborn, Mother of Dragons, The Unburnt, Twister of Tongues
The clip in question, which can be seen at 4:37 in this video, is an outtake from Episode 6 of Season 6. Daenerys is on the back of her dragon Drogon delivering a speech to the Dothraki horde to inspire them to follow her across the sea and kill her enemies. But this is a behind-the-scenes clip before the visual effects have been inserted, so she's actually just sitting on a green mount with tennis balls on either side of her, saying made-up words in a pretend language. And she can't get the words out. It so happens that a lot of Dothraki words sound similar to a certain four-letter English word, so Clarke leans into that for comic effect. She's really struggling to get it out, with multiple blown takes. "F—ed up all of my Dothraki," she announces exasperatedly at the end of the sequence.
It's a fun clip, because it's a moment where we can all put ourselves in Emilia Clarke's Valyrian boots. If we had to learn a foreign language and deliver a long, passionate speech in it, we would mess up, too. Daenerys may be a khaleesi, but Emilia Clarke is very much a human.
"Game of Thrones" is available to stream on HBO Max.