Emilia Clarke on ‘Game of Thrones’ Finale Backlash: ‘We Would Never Have Made Everyone Happy’

The bad taste that the “Game of Thrones” finale left back in May continues to linger — to the point where even George R.R. Martin has sought to shake it off. In a recent conversation with The Daily Telegraph, Emilia Clarke, who played Daenerys Targaryen on the HBO series, talked about life after Westeros and that final episode that has ticked so many viewers off.

“I was too busy focusing on my own reactions to really pay too much attention, if any at all,” she said. “The only thing I felt truthfully sad about was that [executive producers] David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] are my really good friends, and so it’s for them that I feel heartbreak, because it’s theirs.”

Clarke, who stars in Paul Feig’s upcoming holiday-themed film “Last Christmas” opposite “Crazy Rich Asians” and “A Simple Favor” heartthrob Henry Golding, added, “Everyone is going to have their own opinion and they’re fully entitled to them. It’s art and it’s to be dissected and taken on in whatever individual way you wish. And if you’re sad that the show is done and you’re sad because you enjoyed watching it, then that’s sad. It sucks this wasn’t the perfect ending that people were hoping for, but I truly believe we would never have made everyone happy.”

With that in mind, Clarke is ready to move on from “Game of Thrones” too. “I don’t feel pressure to follow up the show because it’s unfollowable. I’m not going to go off and be like ‘Oh well, dragons are my thing…’ I can’t be a crazy woman demanding dragons forever! ‘These aren’t as good as my last dragons!’ Can you imagine?” she said.

Her character in “Last Christmas,” according to the interview, has survived a life-threatening illness, which mirrors Clarke’s own experiences surviving two life-threatening aneurysms.

“It was uncanny reading the script because it’s my life at this point. I have the benefit of having space between myself and my sickness and what you see through Kate is the fear of what happens when your body fails you in some way,” she said. “It’s not one of those things that happens to you and you’re like, ‘I’m happy to be alive.’ It’s the complete opposite of what happens. You spend a good few years of thinking, ‘I’m going to die.’ You can feel incredibly scared about simple things and it’s the act of living that can, in any way, soften that.”

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