Emilia Clarke recalls filming 'GoT' post secret brain surgery

Game of Thrones protagonist Emilia Clarke, last year, revealed she suffered two brain aneurysms during her early years with the hit television show that left her convinced she would die.

Clarke, who plays Mother of Dragons Daenerys Targaryen in the medieval fantasy series, spoke of her two brushes with death for the first time in a personal essay for The New Yorker magazine.

Her essay was published ahead of the highly-anticipated final season of Game of Thrones, which has a dedicated fan following, that premieres on cable channel HBO on April 14.

The actor has now opened up about it impacted her work, reported Entertainment Weekly. 

"It was crazy intense. We are in the desert in a quarry in like ninety-degree heat, and I had the consistent fear that I was going to have another brain hemorrhage. I spent a lot of time just being like: “Am I gonna die? Is that gonna happen on set? Because that would be really inconvenient.” And with any kind of brain injury, it leaves you with fatigue that’s indescribable. I was trying so hard to keep it under wraps," she said.

Adding on, she said, "If I had called my doctor, he would have been like, “Dude, you just need to chill out.” But I still felt blind fear, and the fear was making me panic, and the panic was leading me to feel like I’m going to pass out in the desert. So they brought in an air-conditioned car for me—sorry, planet."

At that point, the showrunner Dan Weiss chimed in. "It was terrifying because this amazing, sweet, wonderful human being came this close to not being around anymore— this person we loved so much after just one year. Obviously, you need to make the show, but the important thing was making sure she was in a safe situation. You ask yourself: Is she as safe doing this show as if she was not doing it?" he said, adding, "If she was home sitting on her couch? She was so gung-ho, the main thing for us was making sure she wouldn’t put herself [in dangerous situations]. She would say: “Yeah, I just had brain surgery and if I need to gallop on a horse down a mountainside, I’ll do it.” You would have to tell her no because she would never say no."

"In all of my years on the show, I never put self-health first, which is probably why everyone else was worrying, as they could see that. They didn’t want to work me too hard. I was like, 'Don’t think I’m a failure; don’t think I can’t do the job that I’ve been hired to do. Please don’t think I’m going to f--k up at any moment.' I had the Willy Wonka golden ticket. I wasn’t about to hand that in," the actor concluded.

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