Emilia Clarke Is Still ‘Sad’ About One Aspect Of The ‘Game Of Thrones’ Final Season Criticism

All these months after the final episode of Game of Thrones, it’s not enough to have an opinion on the series finale — you also need to have an opinion on the backlash to the series finale. Alfie Allen (Theon) is pissed off by the negative reaction to “The Iron Throne,” while Emilia Clarke (Daenerys) feels “sad” about one aspect of the response.

“I was too busy focusing on my own reactions to really pay too much attention, if any at all,” she recently told the Daily Telegraph. “The only thing I felt truthfully sad about was that [executive producers] David [Benioff] and D.B. [Weiss] are my really good friends, and so it’s for them that I feel heartbreak, because it’s theirs.” Clarke doesn’t read reviews of her work (even the season eight haters had near-universal nice things to say about the performances), but that doesn’t mean “I’ve got my shit together,” she continued. “It doesn’t help me to hear someone say, ‘You’re great,’ and it doesn’t help me to hear someone say, ‘Hey, you piece of shit, why are you so fat’ Those are the extremes you deal with when you read about yourself on the internet, so I simply don’t.”

“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.” (Via)

Meanwhile, I can’t wait to find out the ending to Clarke’s next project, the holiday-themed rom-com Last Christmas. There’s clearly a big twist coming — is an angel involved, or maybe everyone’s a ghost — but I have no idea what it is. This is my Game of Thrones.