The fart that almost derailed Emilia Clarke’s acting debut: “Just smell the smell”
Acting is not an easy profession by any stretch of the imagination; you have to pretend to be someone completely different for a start, then remember lines, then things like where to stand and do it all while a load of strangers stare at you holding weird equipment.
Now imagine it’s your first ever time doing it, and someone releases a potent bottom burp, because that’s what happened to Emilia Clarke.
Now, despite the age-old myth of ‘he (or she) who smelt it dealt it’, this particular gust of ill-timed flatulence did not emit from Ms Clarke, because there’s no way that the ‘Mother of Dragons’ would ever do such a thing; she’s far too professional/busy setting her enemies on fire. But Clarke was present on the set of the daytime TV soap Doctors in 2009, the show that ran for a lengthy 24 years and was watched exclusively by hungover students and bored housewives, when the incident happened, and from the sounds of it, it scarred her for good.
Clarke recalled, “On my first ever job, I was the guest lead in an episode of Doctors. There was a really small space, and they were like, ‘OK, we have literally got time for one take, I’m really sorry Emilia, I know this is your debut on TV, but we’ve got one take, so don’t mess it up’.”
Which sounds like pressure enough, without the actor’s nostrils being infiltrated by a noxious blast of methane. She added, “And I walk into this really small office, and I’m meant to look shocked and alarmed and really upset about what I’m looking at. Just horrified”.
It was then that a member of the crew on set made things ten times worse by ‘letting one rip’, leading Clarke to add, “I was like, ‘We have got one take, just smell the smell’”.
You might think that was enough to put her off appearing in front of a camera for good, but in fact it was just the start of things for Clarke, who swapped someone’s sore arse for a Tyrannosaurus the following year in the Syfy channel movie Triassic Attack, and then landed the role that would change her life completely in 2010 as she was cast as Daenerys Targaryen in HBO’s Game of Thrones.
Although nobody really expected it to during the first season, it would become one of the most-watched TV shows in history, and Clarke was its stand-out, iconic star. It led her to movie roles as varied as 2015’s Terminator Genisys and the Emma Thompson-directed Last Christmas in 2019, plus major franchise spin-offs like Solo: A Star Wars Story in 2018.
This year, Clarke has starred in and executive-produced the Cold War drama Ponies alongside Haley Lu Richardson, which went down well but won’t be returning for a second season. She’s also got plenty of stuff coming up, too, with a horror called When Darkness Loves Us on the way with Natasha McElhone, plus a crime drama series with Sons of Anarchy’s Charlie Hunnam called Criminal.
She’ll also be playing Oscar Wilde’s wife, Constance Lloyd, in the film An Ideal Wife, which is about her experiencing a sexual awakening after discovering Wilde’s homosexuality. It’s likely to have plenty of bedroom scenes, so let’s hope nobody farts in those, because that’s always super awkward.
