How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - Emilia Clarke - ‘I’m A Bad Celebrity’

Episode Date: May 13, 2026

Emilia Clarke is the Emmy‑nominated actor who became a global cultural icon as Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones, a role that catapulted her from fresh drama‑school graduate to one of the most recognisable faces on the planet. Since then she’s starred in everything from Me Before You to Solo: A Star Wars Story, won acclaim on the West End and now leads Ponies, a Cold War spy thriller she also produces. In this episode, we talk about her childhood love of acting, the imposter syndrome that followed early fame, her failure to master mathematics, the terror and denial surrounding her aneurysms, the shattering grief of losing her Dad, the joy of female friendships and…yes, ok…Game Of Thrones. ✨ IN THIS EPISODE: 00:00 Cheating Death Opener 00:14 Emilia Clarke Intro 02:54 Ponies And Friendship 03:39 Learning Russian Lines 06:45 Why Acting Means Failure 08:33 Failing At Maths 11:44 Early Acting Spark 14:10 Losing Her Dad 21:09 Failure At Recovery 24:30 Aneurysm In The Gym 27:10 Misdiagnosed Stroke Scare 28:01 Second Aneurysm 29:25 Surgery Goes Wrong 31:37 Relearning and Emotional Shutdown 33:30 Back to Work Too Soon 35:43 Recovery Without Grace 37:40 Healing and New Diagnoses 40:12 Bad at Celebrity 43:01 Game of Thrones Aftermath 46:08 Body Image and Press 48:11 Brows and Beauty Culture 50:40 Self Knowledge and Closing 💬 QUOTES TO REMEMBER: You spend your 20s and 30s trying to be somebody else, and then your 40s are the moment when you go back to who you actually are. I was blessed that after each of my brain injuries, in my mind, there was no other option but to carry on. The only good thing about having someone that you love pass away is that every good thing that ever happens, you know it's them. 🔗 LINKS + MENTIONS: All episodes of PONIES will be available on Sky and steaming service NOW in the UK & Ireland from 22 May Join the How To Fail community: www.howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content Elizabeth’s Substack: www.theelizabethday.substack.com 📚 WANT MORE? Kate Winslet – the Oscar‑winning actor on reinvention, self‑doubt and the power of starting again at any age: swap.fm/l/qrRLW000eyVDrBz3ZtbI Gillian Anderson – the Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning icon on fame, burnout, womanhood and refusing to shrink herself for anyone: swap.fm/l/7NyZMzkfVOpGyDtlB6k0 💌 LOVE THIS EPISODE? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts Leave a 5⭐ review – it helps more people discover these stories 👋 Follow How To Fail & Elizabeth: Instagram: @elizabday TikTok: @howtofailpod Podcast Instagram: @howtofailpod Website: www.elizabethday.org Guest bookings for How To Fail only come from official @sonymusic.com emails Elizabeth answers listener questions in our subscriber series, Failing with Friends. Join our community of subscribers here: www.howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com Production & Post Production Coordinator: Eric Ryan Engineer: Matias Torres Assistant Producer: Shania Manderson Senior Producer: Hannah Talbot Executive Producer: Alex Lawless How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail] _________________________________________________________________________ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I was just convinced that I had cheated death and I was meant to die. I'm a bad celebrity. I suck at it. I finally feel like I'm at a place in my career now where I'm like, I get it. This episode of How to Fail is brought to you by Dove Whole Body Deodorant. Welcome to How to Fail, the podcast that believes, as James Joyce once said, that failures are the portals of self-discovery.

Before we get into this episode, please do remember to like, and subscribe so that you never miss a single conversation. In 1987, a newborn baby is abandoned in a remote spot. Nobody goes down that lane. Why would you think anyone would have picked me up from there? For decades, Jess has searched for answers. Why didn't that person want me? But as she gets closer to the truth, things spiral out of her control. I think I'll always be angry. Could it have ended differently?

From Tortoise Investigates and the Observer, this is found. Lies always come out, don't they? Skeletons are always going to come out eventually. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Ever wondered why some trends are just suddenly everywhere? Newsflash, nothing gets popular by accident. I'm Brittany Luce, and on the It's Been a Minute podcast, I take the things you and I are both obsessing over

and show you the invisible forces behind the scenes that make us love it or hate it. Be smarter about what you're consuming. Listen to the It's Been a Minute podcast today. Amelia Clark was three when she sat on her mother's lap on the front row of the London Palladium watching a production of showboat that her sound engineer father had worked on. She was, she recalled later, transfixed and set her heart on becoming an actor. Almost 20 years later, her TV debut was a guest appearance on the BBC Soap Doctors in 2009.

Then at the age of 23, Clark was cast as Deneres Targaryen, Mother of Dragons, in HBO's Juggernaut fantasy series Game of Thrones. She received four Emmy nominations across eight seasons and became internationally famous, going on to star in films including Terminator Genesis, Solo, A Star Wars Story, and the romantic comedy, Me Before You. On stage, she won critical acclaim for her magnetic performance as Nina in the Seagull in the West End. But the fact that she had been a complete unknown at the time of her Game of Thrones audition left Clark feeling she had, in her words, imposter syndrome times a million. It was not her only challenge.

In 2011, just after filming had rapped on the debut season, she suffered the first of two life-threatening brain aneurysms, a shattering experience that later led to her setting up the charity, same you with her mother, Jenny. Clark's charity work in neuro rehabilitation earned her an MBE in the 2024 honours list. Now she returns to our screens in Ponies, a Cold War spy series on Sky and Now TV. Clark stars as one of the two US embassy secretaries in late 1970s Moscow who become CIA operatives after their husbands die in mysterious circumstances. Still yet to turn 40, that happens later this year.

Clark's acting career has been one of notable highs. But she says, if there's anything else you can do, do that. Because acting has to be the only thing you can do to commit to the levels of failure. Amelia Clark, welcome to How to Fail. Thank you so much. Well, you're amongst friends here. Oh my God, yeah. That was beautiful.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for coming on How to Fail, but also thank you for being such a a supporter of this podcast from the very, very early days. It did not go on notice and it meant a lot. I loved ponies. Oh, good. It's so good.

Good. It's fun. It's so fun. Yes. It feels so fresh. Yes. It's two female leads. That's the thing.

It's two female leads. And it's not even, there's like, it's pure friendship. Yes. It's just pure friendship. There's no, it's not two family leads that are actually going to fall in love with each other. It's just friends, just friends, just female friendship, which is, you know, the most important part of my life. And it's amazing to be able to have a show and be, and that being the main theme of it. And you've said that it's the hardest job you've ever done.

Oh, yeah, which seems weird for all the really. I think maybe it's the best I'm being honest about how hard jobs are. No, I've had some really horrible hard jobs. This was hard because this is the first. I have a production company and this is the first production that I was a producer and an actor in. The added little spicy thing that made it nearly impossible to do was the Russian. Yeah. I speak a lot of Russian.

I'm not a linguist. Incredibly impressive. Thank you very much. Took a lot of work. Did you learn Russian just for the script or can you now speak it? Neat. I can speak I can speak those lines

What I do notice now is that when I'm walking around I hear Russian in a way that I've never acknowledged before I could net you know it's you're like oh I can I think I know what you're saying or like watching the Americans I'm like oh I got that I knew what they were saying but no I definitely do not speak the language Russian

and how did you learn the lines you had a very specific technique didn't you Yes. I mean, we're saying I, I mean Fabian, my incredible teacher for this. And he and I built a process that was like a six-step process, which involves visualization. It involves a memory palace, but it also involves writing stories that then you put into the memory palace. So you have a Russian line and each word brings. broken into its syllables, you know, poor. Let's say that's one of the sounds in one of the words in one of the sentences.

You think of a paw. You think of like a dog's paw. So you're like, right, that's an image. And then you create images for each of these sounds. Then you make those into a story. So you're imagining this, a dog and his paw is holding up this, something else that's holding up. with a cow over here and a da-da-da-da-da.

And so you create this whole story, then you put that story in a space. This is all in your mind. In a space that you know very well. And so you walk in and you see, in your mind's eye, the action happening in these very specific parts of the room. And then you've learned it. That's fascinating.

Wild. The real outtakes is me just swearing profusely every time I mess it up. Do you have a similar technique for learning lines in English? No, I'm very lucky in that now they just go in. People ask like, how do you learn my lines? You just do it. You just, yeah, I definitely, it's that one part of my brain that that muscle is just really well flexed.

Like it just goes in. Before we get into your specific failures, that quote that I ended the introduction on, that idea that it has to be the thing that you do. Has to. What was some of the failures that you were thinking of when you said that? Oh, just every job you didn't get. Every comparison you make of yourself and someone else, every time you think, oh, I did something that felt good.

I took the right job. I had the right experience. People are saying lovely things. And then you look and you're like, but I should have done that. And that's amazing. And this now looks not good. You know, it's kind of a life of, it's asking, I think the industry is life, the world, everyone.

This is not just for actors, is asking you to compare yourself to other people and asking you to compare where you're at. But unlike in any other job, an actor's trajectory is not built upon. You know what I mean? Yes. So you start in the mail room at CAA

and American agency for actors, and then within 15 years, you should be a fully fledged agent with really impressive client list. As an actor, you start with one job, and then you go to the left and you go to the right, and then you doesn't work out, and then this doesn't, you're not guaranteed to keep going up.

And you have to prove yourself every time. Every single time. You have to re-prove yourself every single time. We're going to get into your failures now because they're so great. Thanks. And Amelia Clark is an incredibly chic person. And you've given me very chic failures.

Because they were one word each, but within each word, I'm just so excited about the stories that they are going to contain. Yes. Your first failure, we start slightly softer. Your first failure is maths. Yeah. I could have just put numbers. I could have just, yeah, maths and numbers. I just can't do it.

There's this word for being essentially dyslexic with numbers. Yes. I think that's discalculate. Yes. My dad was a, just a, the genius level math. Like, just the smartest man ever. My brother, the same, like, crazy clever. And I was kind of always the thick one in the family.

The dummy. And it all really began with maths. My dad would test me on my times tables and I would just cry. It sort of became this like, pinnacle of unintelligence which followed me throughout my whole school career

to the point where when I'm on stage doing the Seagull in the West End and Tom Reese Harris the cheek little bugger we're talking about prime numbers and it's scripted and we have our lines and he decides to change it one night

because he thinks it's funny and he looks at me and he goes white because I've gone white I'm crying and he in the end of what runs out. I'm so sorry. Like I saw you crumble. I didn't mean to do that. I think he then riffed for me, but it's like this constant fear.

Sounds like fear. Like a deep, yeah, like a fear of numbers, which feels like a colossal failure. So interesting. I feel I can relate to this. I similarly had a thing with my dad, who is terrifically intelligent and an amazing scientist. Yes.

He's a retirement, he's a surgeon. And he hoped. Yes. And he used to try and teach me. Yes. And I felt so bad that I was not living up to what I perceived to be his expectation of me. So I was lessing him down. Yes.

Did you have that aspect? 100%. Yeah. I could see it in my dad like, why aren't you getting it? And my dad was an incredibly sensitive, kind, loving, gorgeous man. I rarely saw him cross. But I knew in that moment. in the back of the car of just going, I can't get part.

Like, this is, I have done something wrong here. This is wrong that I can't do it because he's something that's so simple for him to do. And I just could never get there. And the more you avoid it, the bigger they become. Yes. And then you end up pulling pints in a bar in Hackney between the days before Game of Thrones when I'd just come out of drama school and I lost them money.

I lost the bar money because people would give me a 20 and I would probably give that right back. Yeah. You know? I'd give them six drinks and the fear of not being able to calculate.

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I'm Jonathan Hirsch. Cut Color Kill is available now on The Binge. Search for it wherever you get your podcast to start listening today. Subscribers to The Binge can listen to all episodes, all at once, add free. Talk to me a little bit about young Amelia and this transfixed moment you had when you went to see showboat age three. Yes. Did you literally want to be an actor from that age? Yeah.

How wonderful. I know, wild. It sort of just sounds really precocious and obnoxious. But I think with my dad in the theatre, I was aware of that job earlier than someone else would have been. I used to watch Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrington in My Fair Lady. I used to watch that daily for like four years, I think. Fast forward through all of Rex's bits. I'm not, him in the library, nope.

Not interested in you, brov. But that whole story had me transfixed. And I just, I remember being at school and we had put on, they were putting on a play. And this was baby school. This was like before, I mean, I must have been five. And I didn't realize it at the time, but the teacher had a stand in the line. and she gave us a paragraph to say out loud. I now see that that was my first audition,

which is crazy that she made us audition. It's really weird. And then I got, and then she said, okay, that's the part that you'll play. And I remember I ran out of the school gates and said to my mom,

I did it, I got the part. Wow. She was like, what are you talking about? I don't know. What do you mean? And that feeling

of succeeding in getting the part. And then I'm stood on stage in front of at that time, it felt like a thousand people. And I just felt really comfortable. And I forgot my lines and I just stood and looked out into the audience and just smiled. We got it all on camera for me just going. And very at ease, very, very at ease. You felt aligned maybe. Yeah, with all eyes on me.

I find it very mood. that this failure has led us to talk about your dad. Yeah. And I wonder if subconsciously or consciously, maybe that's why you chose it. Maybe. Yeah. Because your dad died in 2016.

Yeah, 10 years this year. I'm so sorry. Thank you. It's the worst. I've had two brain hemorrhages. I've had Game of Thrones and nothing. There is nothing. worse. It's, it was the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the,

single most transformative thing that's ever happened. Mm. Definitely. Definitely. Um, it's this thing where when I find, and I, I, I, I, when I meet women who've also lost their fathers, the thing that happened that I didn't, that I had no, that you can never understand, predict or understand, it feels like, I, I, I, I, I feel like, I didn't, I, it feels like, it feels like, It feels like the safety net in the world has gone, but it's a safety net you didn't know was there. And it was just unfathom- I'm a relentlessly optimistic person,

and it was unfathomable that that could happen. And it took me years to just comprehend it, the finality of it, the enormity of it. And we just weren't prepared, and it wasn't... And it wasn't, at no point did anyone say your dad's dying of cancer. It was just like, oh, this is wrong with him, and then this is wrong with him, and then this is wrong with him. And he'd had this cancer diagnosis. And I was, way, I was filming.

And I went back, I'll tell you my spooky story about this. So I was filming this tiny movie that had barely even got released. because I wanted to, I really wanted to do it. And I remember leaving and then being like, should I be leaving? And my mum being like, your father's a professional, he would kill you if you didn't do this job. So I was doing it in Kentucky, which is like a 22-hour door-to-door journey. And I got some, we got the call that said, first of all, I had the call of your father's going into an operation that he might not, lived through, talked to him on the phone.

Not pleasant. He survived that. And then I got the call saying you have to come back home. So I got the flights back home and he was in a coma. And I sat with him for three days. And then my job was like, we can't continue filming if you don't come home. And my mum again was like, it's two weeks. You've got two weeks left.

Like, just go, just go back. So I went back and then woke on up in the middle of the night, it's time, you've got to come back. So I didn't tell anyone I just left. And the whole flight from Kentucky, two flights, Kentucky to New York, New York to London. I didn't have, I didn't know. But when I landed in New York, my mom was like, he's asking you to have, to have. hurry. He was sort of like doing this and, you know, and this whole time you're like, I'm on this, I need this flight to move quicker. And I'll never forget, I got on the flight to New York.

And do you remember the days of satellite phones? Yes. So this was 2016. There wasn't why, the Wi-Fi over didn't exist in planes at that point, probably didn't. And I asked them, I was like, do you have a satellite? And they were like, what are you talking about? Of course we we don't. And I was like, okay, okay, so I'm just going to be sitting on this. flight for like 10 hours and I can't contact anyone. Oh my God. How do I even? I can't.

This is really difficult. So I was sat there and I just knew I needed to calm myself down. So I was like, what can I do? I'm going to do a thought experiment. I'm going to imagine that I'm in the hospital. How, what could get into a hospital? A bird is too big. They would know that there was a bird in the hospital.

Forget the bird. A butterfly. A butterfly can be in a hospital. And so I imagine that I'm flying around the hospital and I'm like making sure that the doctors are going to do a really good job and I'm fluttering around my dad being like, I'm coming, I'm coming home, I'm coming, like hold on, you're going to be fine. And then I somehow fall asleep and in a dream I'm in the dream and I'm in my airline seat and my dad's hospital bed is next to me and he just turns and said I just came to say goodbye and I land and my mum sends me a text saying don't rush so I knew that he'd passed and he passed at the time that I was having the dream and then I get there and I see I spend time with his body which just you know I was there with my dad

my mom and my brother have been in the hospital for days and we open the house and there's butterfly is flying around the room so now I just see my dad in butterflies everywhere and every summer because he passed away in July it's just I don't know

I just feel so strongly that the what happens after we die we don't know but one things for certain is that we go back into the world. We go back into the world. My father was cremated. And he is everywhere. Yes. He's absolutely everywhere. That is so beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that. And this is the extent of my scientific knowledge is that we're made up of atoms.

This is where science and spirituality meet. And my dad was a deeply spiritual yet. deeply scientific man. He deeply believed in black holes. And I'm like, that's where you are. Yeah. We're in a parallel. You're in a parallel universe. And I, uh, I miss him every single day. And I know that he, the only good thing about having someone that you love passed away is that every good thing that ever happens, you know it's them. And I feel that. Yes. I really, really feel that. Thank you so much. He sounds like a wonderful person. And I hope you're going to be kind to yourself in July? Yes. Yes. No, we always do something, or at least, you know, if we're not all together, we'll always try and do something. Sometimes it's just going to the pub and

raising a pint because you're like, beer. Yeah. Beer and drinking beer. What a legend. Yeah, exactly. This sort of brings us on to your second failure. Yeah. Which is recovery. Yeah. And I know a little about this because of our mutual friend, Clemonde, at C Burton Hill. Yes. Who went through a brain aneurysm. And the process of recovery was very long and challenging. It was a really big thing to go through.

And she had a near-death experience that was a sort of visceral, it was a visceral thing that she went through. And I wonder whether you ever experienced something similar, whether that changed your attitude. No. So this is why I have recovery as a failure. Yeah. I wrapped the first season of Game of Thrones, wild experience.

Biggest job of note, you know. I'd never done anything with America. I didn't really quite understand the level of what HBO was and could be. And clueless, but had the most incredible time. But it flipped my life upside down. So I was quite stressed. And we wrapped that in December. February, I was in the gym doing a plank and had my first brain hemorrhage and then spent the next

two weeks with my agent trying to not tell HBO until they knew I wouldn't die. So the first two weeks after a brain injury, if you're not clearly severely mentally disabled or in a coma or whatever it might be, they're just waiting for something to go wrong. They're waiting for it to get worse. It was in A&E until they worked out what was wrong with me. And then I went to a different hospital and they were, you know, plugging me in and I just kept trying to say like, I've got to go to work. Like I don't, like I can't be here. How long am I? How long is this going to take? And they're like, you've got, your brain is bleeding. It's going to take quite some time. So that took a long time for me to wrap my head around. But as soon as I left hospital, I had maybe, maybe a month.

and then I was doing press for the first season of Game of Thrones, still with a bit of morphine. Bloody hell, Amelia. I was so ashamed that this thing had happened and that the people who had employed me might see me as weak or see me as something that could be broken. It was so like, I'm fine, I'm fine. And I was so young.

and it was so all-consuming that any repercussions of the injury, I just absolutely ignored and tried my best to just like pretend like it didn't happen in order to get back to work, in order to keep working and be, you know, good. And then very quickly after that, we were doing season two.

Did you tell anyone on Game of Thrones at all? No. I told David and Dan, the showrunners, because I felt it was like my duty to say, I didn't die. So everything's fine, but just letting you know. And they were obviously very kind and lovely, but it was not something I told a single soul

because I just didn't want anyone to know. So if you don't mind, going back to that moment when you're doing a plank in a gym in North London, what is the first feeling that you get? I have to preface this with the night before I'd had this horrible headache and I just felt restless and anxious and stressed. I remember it really clearly being like,

I don't feel good in my brain and body. And I was staying at my parents and then I'd got the train to London and was just like, oh, got this weird headache in the back of my neck, like right around in the back. Didn't think anything of it because I got headaches quite a lot. And then I arrived at the gym and was like, like we've all had those days where you're at the gym going,

I mean, I'd rather be anywhere else. Like, this is really hard. And it felt particularly difficult, but I was in a mode of beating myself up. So you're like, come on, we're doing this, we're going to do it. So I arrived incredibly tired. And we were doing the plank. And then the closest thing to describe it is imagine an elastic band just snapping around your brain. This, like, insane pressure.

and I stopped and he was like, where does it hurt? And I said my head and my trainer was like, that's not good. And then everything feels like a blur. I crawled to the loo and was just vomiting profusely with this unbearable headache. And in that moment, I knew I was being brain damaged. Something click. Tomorrow's world.

I don't know. Someone somewhere had said, If you're throwing up and you have a headache, that's bad. That's really bad. So I started wiggling my fingers and toes, and I started going through all the lines from the show. And I just kept saying to myself, I'm an actor. Because I just got my dream job.

So I just wanted to, you know. So I just kept saying this kind of mantra over and over and over and over again. And then someone and I don't know who, because I was really coming in and out of consciousness, someone obviously heard me called an ambulance. Someone else found my phone back in the day when your phone didn't need to be unlocked by your eyeballs. And they called my mum and they got me in an ambulance. And then my parents, by the time I'd got to hospital, my parents walked past because I was in the hallway.

It was very busy London Hospital, which at this point we're now on like a Saturday night. And my parents walked up and they didn't recognize me because when you were in so much pain, there's just, and they were waiting to figure out what was wrong with me. So they couldn't really give me any drugs. So I was just in excruciating amounts of pain and then they put us in this little room. And the nurse on duty,

and the nurse on the night duty that came on, her husband was a brain surgeon and she was like, has anyone given you a brain scan? Because no one knew what was wrong. No one. They were like, this girl's on duty. drugs, which is often happens if you're a young person and you're having a stroke or you're having a brain bleed of any kind, people who assume it's drugs, which sounds.

My goodness. And then I got rushed to a specialist hospital. Thank you so much for telling that story because I imagine it costs you something every time you tell it and you go back there. I definitely go back there, yeah. Yes. You then have another aneurysm. Yes.

So, yeah, I thought that I was doing. really well and everything was brilliant and I was doing a terrible play on Broadway, but I was living in New York. Yeah. And I was having the time of my life and had this cute little studio apartment and everything was wonderful. And I had come to, I was coming to the end of the show and the end of my SAG Medical. Yeah, so SAG Screen Actors Guild. It's the union medical that you have when you're acting in America. Yes. And I was like, oh, I need a brain scan because at that point I was having a brain scan every six months because basically they saw when when they fixed the first one they saw that I had a second aneurysm right because they often come in clusters or

what we call mirror aneurysms which is basically when your brain is being formed it's one cell and there might be a weakness on one artery and as the cell grows and turns into the two sides of your brain that weakness is separated equally onto both sides so I had this one one that ruptured. And they were like, there's this smaller one, but it's too small to operate on. So we're just going to keep an eye on it, and it's going to be fine. And I went and got the brain scan, and the doctors in America said, hey, lady, we've got to do something about this. It's got like three times bigger in the last six months. It's going to be a really quick operation. It's going to be in and out. In overnight, that's it. It's going to be totally fine.

You're in really good hands. My mom and dad flew over for it. And I remember, I remember. I remember counting down with the anesthetic. And I was just like, this is, I had just have a terrible feeling. And then the next thing I remember is then waking me up and having that fit that pain all over again because they were like, we're gonna crack, it went wrong, we have to cut your head open and we have to have your permission.

And then I remember, all I remember is I'm lying on the gurney and I can see my mom and dad like over there, and I can just remember my mom's head nodding going, say yes. It had just gone wrong in surgery. If you imagine like a bubble, you've got your vein, and then this is just like a, the weakness as the blood pumps round

turns into this little bubble that's filled with blood. And as your blood pressure gets more, that the pressure on that becomes so great. So if it ruptures, they fill it to simply say, to simply stop a that so there's not blood blowing into your brain. And I think they just filled it a bit too much. So that caused a tear. So then they had to cut my head open and clamp it.

And then that's a bit more secure. But it was quite a big bleed. And the only, I have no memories of anything that I was, I didn't see any, I didn't have any spiritual awakening or anything. but my parents were waiting for me and the doctors would just come down every half an hour going, we think she's going to die.

No, we think she's blind. No, we think she's going to be paralyzed. Nope. Every half an hour they're just trying to work out what parts of my brain were going and how they were trying to save me. And my mum says that she felt a bright light and she knew that everything was going to be okay.

And then they came down and said, she's fine. So that's pretty wild. So I know this from Clemy, whose initial recovery, I was there for some of it. She was in a coma for 17 days and then had to relearn how to walk and talk. Did you have to relearn? Yeah. So that happened.

The first one, not at all. The second one, when you're in America has stronger drugs. I was in OxyContin and Percocet. way back before anyone knew that those words were bad. There was a lot of pain medication. Speech and movement came, but it was a process. Nothing like Clemy. The biggest thing that happened to me with the second brain hemorrhage was I shut down emotionally.

Right. And it became this thing where I just couldn't look anyone in the eye. When you have a brain injury, you move around in the brain. world and for me what happened after the first and specifically after the second, I was just convinced that I had cheated death and I was meant to die and that every day that was I should be, that's all I could think about. So it was the opposite of like, I survived, I feel great. And it was this like, I'm not meant to be here. This is going to come and get me. And that, like, it just cuts you off from being able to engage with the outside world

because you're walking around knowing that your body has failed you, your brain has failed you, this thing that you know to be where yourself, your perception of yourself lies, has failed you, and no one else can see it. So you've become very sensitive and then I'll never forget we went to Comic-Con again like literally six weeks later I'm like promoting the show

six weeks after the operation that you've just described is that? Yes. Okay, so sorry I don't want to interrupt but I just for anyone who's listening to this rather than watching on YouTube my expression is one of shock and admiration in a way. It was helpful Without my work, I don't know what I would have done.

The repercussions that I had as a result of my brain injury are all things hilariously that I've only just fixed. That I was quite happy living with. Not happy, but, you know, okay, it'd be fine. Like it wasn't debilitating to the point where I can't walk or I can't speak or I used to think my ability to act had gone. Definitely don't have any maths now. And so we were promoting the show.

We were at San Diego Comic-Con. It's wild, it's crazy. And I started getting a headache. And I, anytime I got any kind of headache, I was like, that's it. It's happening. It's happening again. And I was getting this headache. And my public sister was like, right, we've got to go do this live interview with MTV.

And I was like, I think I'm going to die. I think I think it's happening. And she was like, I don't know, what do you say to that? In my head, I was like, if I'm going to die, I'll do it on live TV. Like, let's go. This is, there is, there is no other option, which was. after each, I was blessed that after each of my brain injuries, in my mind, there was no other option but to carry on. I was raised by a family that did not partake in pity. Self pity was not

on the table. It's not how we operated. And one of the deepest cuts of having the second brain Hemorrhage was that I was like, that's not very fair. Why did I have to have another one? Like that, and that thought felt like going backwards. Gosh, you must have lost faith in so, lost trust in so much. In myself. Yes. That being the biggest issue. Yes. That's what it does. And is that why you've chosen recovery as a failure? Yes, because I didn't. I didn't do any of the things. I did not take care of myself. I did not give myself any grace. I did not give myself any encouragement or I didn't glean any courage from it. I didn't I didn't give myself any kindness, any. Everything was

like you failed. You like I remember calling David and down after the second one and being like, Like, lull, have it again. Don't worry, though. Don't write me out of the show. I'm good. I'm going to be fine. And they were, you know, sweet and lovely and kind and obviously like, oh my God, are you okay?

But in my mind, I'm like, that means that you don't think I can do my job. And again, we are talking about a time when there weren't a lot of young women in big shows. Hell, there weren't a lot of shows. This was the beginning of prestige TV. Not the beginning, obviously, Sopranos was the beginning. But like, you know, the like... Tomorrow's World was at the beginning. Tomorrow's World!

Loved that reference. Loved that reference. So good baby in the water. Yes, yeah. You were so brilliant in Game of Thrones. Thanks. You don't need me to tell you that, but I am going to tell you that. You really, you really were.

But I'm very interested in this idea of people pleasing being taken to its extreme. Literally, it's extreme. I am dawning on the era. where that is behind me. It's taken me a number of years to get there. But this was like height. Yes. Peak, people pleasing time.

I tried to keep as much familiarity around me as I could. And I think looking back, it's probably a reaction to having been so ill. Where are you in your recovery now? Has that omnipresent fear of it happening again? Has that gone? Yes. Yes. That kind of, that left me. a couple of years after the second one, I think.

One morning you wake up and you're like, oh, haven't had that thought in a while. Whereas before, I would say to my hair and makeup team, or I would say to whatever job I was on, I would take people that I trusted and liked that were going to be up in my face. I'm going to think I'm having a brain hemorrhage quite a lot. I'm not.

And they're like, I don't know. You want to give me that? Do you want me to hold that? What if you are? You know, it's this sort of, it's quite, you know, fear, it's infectious. And then, yeah, and then a couple of years after, I just realized that I wasn't thinking about that anymore. And I get my brain checked all the time and it's completely fine. But there were other things that I now know were I've lived with the other result of a brain injury that only this year have I properly fixed.

which is crazy. I run a charity. I'm doing this all day long. And that's where my failure of recovery, because I did everything wrong. Yes. And the things that you've only just fixed, are they the psychology of what you went through?

Do you know about Elos Dandlos syndrome? I've heard of it. Yes. Yes. So I have that. Okay. I'm on that spectrum, the hypermobile spectrum.

There are things that are a repercussion of having that M-CAS being one of them, mass cell activation syndrome, basically just means I have a very, I have a lot of inflammation because my body thinks it's allergic to everything. I have this remarkable doctor in America and he's just fixed everything and I feel great. Oh, I'm so in a way that I didn't realize how it could feel great, you know, because you're like, it's fine. There's none of those things are interrupting my life to a massive degree. Well, may your 40s be blessed. Oh my goodness.

In my experience, it's the best decade yet. Well, I do believe I'm entering the fuck it. I feel like spiritually you've always been in your 40s. She said knowledgeably not knowing, but I feel like an old soul. Yes, you're going to love it. You're going to love it. I'm excited. Okay, let's get on to your final failure because, oh, I can't wait to go into this with you.

Fame. Yeah. I'm a bad celebrity. I suck at it. I just, I mean, I feel like everything that I've just been talking about just then is a contributing factor to it. But when you are dealing with fatigue after a brain injury, it's real. That, I remember after the first one in the second season, I did my first filming day and I walked into my hotel room and I collapsed and I woke up the next morning exactly where I'd fallen. Wow.

You know, we're not saving lives, but filming. days can be 18 hours. You're on your feet. It's, it's acting, you know, it's, I'm not not trying to say that our job is more important than it is, but it's incredible, it can be taxing because you're, you're kind of wired and tired all the time. Because you're just on. Also, can I say you have had two brain aneurysms. And that is one of the symptoms. It's like overwhelming, crushing tiredness. Exactly. Because you're kind of catching up with yourself and your brain is reimagining itself. But what it means is it meant. that my ability to be social of an evening

or go to the party or go to the event or there's this and there's this and then there's this and then there's this party afterwards and then there's that and there's that and there's this afterwards and then someone wants you here and someone wants you there. I have to make choices

as to how many of those things I was able to do. People want to give you a wonderful hotel and one of the free stuff and I'm like, I don't need much. Yes. In fact, too much I find a bit overwhelming. Yes. I've had a few interviews or experiences before where people really want you to be a diva.

And that is not me and never has been. And this sounds like a humble brag, as I'm saying it out loud. But it's as a kid growing up wanting to be an actor, it wasn't to be famous. It was to be creative and be an actor. And you sort of sometimes I just found myself in certain rooms where I was just like, I'm not meant to be here. It feels like there was a conflict with your own authenticity. Yes. Yes.

Yes. So do you think, was your perception that people were disappointed that you were too normal? I felt like a big fat loser. Oh, Amelia. I know. I know. That must have been strange as well because Game of Thrones, don't know if you know this, it was kind of massive. And got a lot of fans.

Yes, yes. And I know that you've had negative experiences with stalking. And I'm sure there was a lot that felt unmanageable and scary. Yes. Yes. Yes. So was there a part of you that wanted to close yourself off from that too? How do you feel about Game of Thrones now?

Oh. It's a really good question. It changes all the time, changes every year. There's distance there. So I can see it fully for all that it is. it was way too big for me to comprehend, even a year after it happened. It was just, it's like thinking about high school. It's how I always describe it, because it was 10 years of my life.

Those friendships and relationships that you have become like family in that like there was fighting and there was difficult times and there was wonderful times, but there was life. People got married, people got divorced, people got kids, you know, these enormous things happened. And looking back on Game of Thrones, It's, it's, it's, the enormity of it for me is a lived experience of what I felt filming it. A lived experience of what was reflected back to me when you meet fans.

The like freak outs I'd get for being in the last couple of years at least so visibly, you know, as soon as I got wrecking, like there was, used to get panic attacks. Like it was just, I just couldn't, it couldn't handle it really in that moment. moment. And then you look back on it and you're sort of like, that was lightning in a bottle. That was my youth. That was like extraordinary, this extraordinary thing. And I was a part of it. And I, you know, the lived experience versus looking back on what you felt when you were filming it. and what you see it do have been from a cultural point of view. And those two things are very far apart.

So I think it's going to take me a few more years to try and marry them up. And have you watched House of the Dragon? No. That's like going to like someone else's high school reunion. Okay, right. Yes, got it. Okay. And are you still very good friends with Jason Momoa? I am. Yes, beautiful Jason.

Kit and Rose are my closest, though. They're the ones that I see the most. Kit Harrington played John Snow and Rose Leslie, who is his actual wife, played Yagat. That's lovely, that those friendships have maintained themselves. Yes, yeah. When you get people recognising you in the street, how does that feel and what do they say? It does not feel overwhelming anymore. Great.

Which is wonderful. And it feels lovely. You're like, oh, just give me a little boost. That's so nice. These people are being so nice to me. I finally feel like I'm at a place in my career now where I'm like, I get it. Whereas I was so young. And I know I was in my 20s, but from an industry and work point of view, I was the most naive creature you could possibly imagine.

I had no idea. You don't Google yourself, do you? Hell no. So sitting in my hospital bed after the first brain injury, my dad was reading the newspaper. but there was some article in it about the size of my bum. It was read to me and destroyed me, completely destroyed me. I'm sure they were trying to be like, hey, look at that, a regular size butt on TV. How nice.

But that robbed me of any desire to ever read anything about myself. And I've never Googled myself. You know, Game of Thrones is a racy show. There's a lot of comments. It's a lot of stuff. Yes. How was a kid? Well, you started off this failure by saying that you,

are a failure as a celebrity or not a very good celebrity. Yeah, like just not, I just didn't. Yes. Some people are born for fame, you know? Get the free stuff. Have a beautiful time. Go to every party. And historically, that hasn't been me.

Now I'm like, hell yeah, a party sounds fun, but because I feel good with it. Well, what I would like to say is that I think you are a very loved celebrity, actually. And because I have Googled you in preparation for this into you, I can reassure you. You don't ever need to do it. Good. People love you and warm to you because they see your authenticity. That's very nice. And actually the fact that you've been through all of this stuff and all of this struggle

and retained the essence of who I feel you really are is such a testament to your strength of character. And it's why I believe you are so loved. Thank you. That's incredibly, incredibly kind. You spend your 20s and 30s trying to be somebody else. And then your 40s are the moment when you go back to who you actually are. That's 100% be my experience. That's how it feels right now.

I feel now that I'm like, I don't care. Yes. I'm just going to be exactly what I am. Don't find it. This is going to be a slightly superficial note. Excellent. I'm here for it. But I am a fellow eyebrows. Yes. I love your eyebrows.

I literally had mine done especially for today. I'm like, I need to come and bring my brow A game. They look very good. And one of the things that you are loved for by the wider public, not just me, is your expressiveness and your eyebrows. Yes. And is it true that your mother said to you once, don't do drugs, don't have sex, don't do anything to your brows? Yeah, literally. Okay.

She used to bribe me. She said when I was like, I want to be like posh spice and I want to get rid of, I just want to have the tiniest little eyebrows. She was like, let me just, I'm going to get you an appointment with an eyebrow specialist. Like they existed. Do you know what I mean? Like that wasn't around then. And she just kept being like, oh yeah, they're busy. But we're just going to and just and then I forgot about it.

That's genius. Genius. Wise, wise women. Yeah. Yeah. But do you find it slightly absurd? that we live in such a culture where a woman's natural expressiveness is worthy of note in the public eye? Oh, my God. It breaks my heart that that is where we are right now. It makes me very sad.

Women should do whatever they want to do for themselves to feel good and feel beautiful. But I do believe that we just are beautiful. You know, you just. star. And the thing that I worry about is I think that one procedure can lead to another. I remember it when I had, I went through a phase of having my, you know, the eyelash extensions? Yes. The ones that they like glue in permanently, like semi-permanent. And I started doing them. It was like, oh my gosh, game changer. And my mom's got to a point where she was like, darling, you look like an elephant. This is outrageous. And I couldn't see how, like, hooked I'd got on them.

You literally couldn't see, probably. Literally couldn't see. And then, like, fall off it, get really sanked and take care of them. But where does it end? I don't want to judge anyone for making any choices about whatever makes them feel good. But I hope that they're making the choices from a place of what they, they, you want, you know what I mean? Yes, from self-knowledge. Yeah.

And I think in so many ways that's what this conversation has been all about. That self-knowledge that you've got. got back to you that you had when you were three and you went to showboats and life is an unpacking back to that point. Yes. Amelia Clark, it has been such a joy to talk to you. Thank you so much for coming on How to Fail. Thank you for having me.

Thank you. Thank you so much for listening and watching. This episode has been brought to you by Dove Whole Body Deodorant. Please do follow How to Fail to get new episodes as they land on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. please tell all your friends. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening.