{"id":673654,"date":"2026-05-30T06:45:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T06:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/673654\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T06:45:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T06:45:09","slug":"emilia-clarke-doesnt-regret-her-franchise-flops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/673654\/","title":{"rendered":"Emilia Clarke Doesn’t Regret Her Franchise Flops"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emilia Clarke rose to fame at the very start of her career playing Daenerys Targaryen on Game of Thrones. But the final season of HBO\u2019s blockbuster series was, shall we say, not very well received\u2014in large part because of the way Dany\u2019s hero-to-villain arc was handled. That wasn\u2019t Clarke\u2019s fault, of course, but it still meant fans didn\u2019t have the best associations with her. And while her career has continued and she\u2019s found success in dramas and rom-coms, her track record in big franchises hasn\u2019t been the greatest, with roles in the likes of Solo: A Star Wars Story<\/a>, Terminator Genisys<\/a>, and Marvel series Secret Invasion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, in a new interview with Variety<\/a>, Clarke sounds like she\u2019s not letting the end of Thrones or any of her other high-profile misfires bother her too much. She\u2019s even able to joke about the tepid reception to Secret Invasion, saying, \u201cNo one liked that show, guys,\u201d as well as the others: \u201cStar Wars? They didn\u2019t like it. Terminator? That should never have happened. But these were jobs I said yes to, you know what I mean?\u201d<\/p>\n

And she doesn\u2019t take the failures too much to heart. \u201cI entered into already existing franchises, so when they don\u2019t work out, it\u2019s not personal,\u201d she told Variety.<\/p>\n

However, these experiences did teach her to be more selective: \u201cI said no to a lot [\u2026] I need to wait for the right thing.\u201d She still has fond memories of her time on Game of Thrones, calling creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss \u201cgeniuses.\u201d But she also underlines that she didn\u2019t really have any creative input into shaping Daenerys beyond the performance itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was given the seasons, and I, to the best of my ability, empathized and understood and tracked every choice she made so it felt like mine. I felt like that was what my job was,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Looking back, she added, \u201cI have gone through every circuitous route to get to the place that I am now, which is finally being able to be very grateful for everything that Game of Thrones did and has given me. I no longer feel trapped in it, or trapped in the result of being in it. I feel just really lucky that it happened to me\u2014even luckier that I\u2019ve had time to understand what that was, and now I feel firmly on the other side.\u201d<\/p>\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emilia Clarke rose to fame at the very start of her career playing Daenerys Targaryen on Game of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":673655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[146711,88,52585,12761,35625,198945,197311],"class_list":["post-673654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-emilia-clarke","tag-entertainment","tag-game-of-thrones","tag-marvel","tag-secret-invasion","tag-solo-a-star-wars-story","tag-terminator-genisys"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/673655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}