When talking about one particular scene from season 5, Jeremy Podeswa reveals that he decided to change Daenerys Targaryen's speech from English to Valyrian at the last minute on the set.
- November 30, 2020
AceShowbiz - Actress Emilia Clarke managed to improvise an entire "Game of Thrones" speech in a fictional language without anyone noticing.
The star, who portrayed dragon queen Daenerys Targaryen on the show, met the challenge of creating an entire chunk of dialogue from scratch on the spot after director Jeremy Podeswa decided to change the monologue from English to Valyrian at the last minute on set.
"There's usually a lot of preparation for that sort of thing and so much consideration that goes into it and she had quite a big monologue before she sets the guy on fire," Jeremy recalled to Entertainment Weekly of the scene, from season five of the show. "I went over to Emilia and I was like, 'I know this is a really big ask, but do you think you could figure out a way to do this in Valyrian?' She said, 'Yeah, sure, I think I can do this'. And I'm all, 'Really?' Then she went off and cobbled together things that (Daenerys) had said in the past that made sense. She came back in 10 minutes and had this whole monologue down."
Podeswa was blown away by Emilia's impromptu performance, insisting the improvisation was close to flawless.
"I just had to hand it to Emilia for taking on the challenge and making it completely credible," he gushed. "Every single take, every intonation, and the way she phrased everything, you completely understood what she was meant to be saying. Then the subtitles all seemed authentic to what she was doing."
"She knew the language well enough at that point to make it all work. It wasn't tracking perfectly in Valyrian, but no fan ever noticed it. She did an amazing job."
"Game of Thrones" ran for eight seasons before concluding its run last year (19).
