Emilia Clarke Watched Hitler Speeches to Prepare for Big ‘Game of Thrones’ Moment
DRACARYS
Emilia Clarke, who portrayed firebrand conqueror-turned-mass murderer Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones, told Variety that she prepared for her big victory speech in the series finale by watching historical footage of dictators speaking. Reviews of the episode compared the speech, conducted in the fictional Dothraki and Valaryian languages, to Hitler in Triumph of the Will. “In giving all these speeches in fake languages, I watched a lot of videos of—now it seems funny—dictators and powerful leaders speaking a different language to see if I could understand what they were saying without knowing the language,” Clarke said. “And you can! You absolutely can understand what Hitler’s fucking saying, these single-focus orators speaking a foreign language. So I thought, ‘If I can believe every single word I’m saying, the audience won’t need to be looking at the subtitles too much.’”