Emilia Clarke Used the Creepiest Strategy to Nail Daenerys’s Speech—And Got It in One Take
In the climactic finale of Game of Thrones in 2019, Emilia Clarke’s portrayal of Daenerys Targaryen took a dark and unforgettable turn. Her notorious speech to her troops after the conquest of King’s Landing marked a pivotal shift—from liberator to tyrant—and one of the series’ most intense moments. What many fans might not know is that Clarke’s preparation for this speech involved an unexpectedly eerie source of inspiration: watching dictators deliver speeches in foreign languages.
In a revealing interview with Variety, Clarke explained how she studied videos of powerful orators like Adolf Hitler, not to understand the content of their words, but to absorb their emotional intensity and rhetorical presence. Since Daenerys’s speech was delivered in Dothraki and Valyrian—fictional languages created for the show—Clarke couldn’t rely on understanding the words themselves. Instead, she focused on tone, body language, and delivery, tuning into the kind of single-minded force dictators exude during their orations.
“I watched a lot of videos of—now it seems funny—dictators and powerful leaders speaking a different language to see if I could understand what they were saying without knowing the language,” Clarke shared. She emphasized how clear the intent and emotional charge could be, even without comprehension, saying, “You absolutely can understand what Hitler’s f—ing saying, these single-focus orators speaking a foreign language.”
This intense, somewhat unsettling method clearly paid off. Clarke nailed the entire speech in a single take during filming, calling the flawless execution “miraculous.” “That’s the only time I got through that speech without getting anything wrong, when it was on camera. If you had asked me to do it the next day, I’d already forgotten it,” she confessed. Her total immersion into Daenerys’s mindset throughout the day helped bring authenticity to the scene, allowing her to embody the character’s chilling transformation fully.
However, the emotional weight of the scene and the series finale took a toll on Clarke personally. She admitted feeling numb watching Daenerys’s fate unfold on screen after investing eight seasons into the character’s journey.
Unsurprisingly, Clarke’s choice to draw from Hitler’s speeches stirred controversy. Media outlets like NME described her method as “creepy,” reflecting on the discomfort of referencing such a dark historical figure, even purely for artistic purposes. Still, the consensus framed her approach as a professional and focused study of oratory technique, not an endorsement of the dictator’s actions.
Other outlets, including Comic Sands, highlighted how unsettling yet effective Clarke’s preparation was in capturing the war-mongering aura Daenerys needed to project in that moment. This approach was contextually appropriate, underscoring the tyrannical energy Daenerys embodied in the finale, as noted by FR24 News and Winter is Coming.
In the end, Emilia Clarke’s creepy but calculated preparation strategy not only helped her deliver one of Game of Thrones’ most memorable speeches but also showcased the lengths actors will go to inhabit complex characters—sometimes venturing into uncomfortable territory to bring fictional moments to haunting life.
