“Game of Thrones,” HBO’s epic medieval fantasy cash cow through most of this decade ended its eight-season in May. For British actress Emilia Clarke, who played the long-running deuteragonist and eventual final antagonist Daenerys Targaryen, the experience of working on the show was very draining, though she did feel that there was one little thing she regretted not doing.

Fox News tells us that during an interview with fellow actress Regina Hall, Clarke related that she failed to do one thing on the set of “Game of Thrones” that is often done by other actors who would leave following the conclusion of production: trying to take a prop for a souvenir.

Forgetting to take a memento home

While being interviewed by Regina Hall, Emilia Clarke noted that she is deeply down because she had not thought of making off with some physical objects from the “Game of Thrones” set to take home with her. "I didn’t take anything, and I deeply regret it, and I’m very annoyed," says the once-Mother of Dragons to Hall. The actress, now aged 32, then spoke of how she grew into a woman in the eight to nine years that the HBO show was in production.

Despite what detractors may think of the later seasons, especially the final one, producing and acting in “Game of Thrones” was an extreme grind for all involved. One particular casualty of the great pressure the cast went through to get all eight seasons of the HBO show out is Clarke’s fellow Brit star, Kit Harington, who portrayed the later-season protagonist Jon Snow.

It was known that Harington had begun rehabilitation for stress and alcohol use in a Connecticut wellness center even before the final episode came on air. Clarke herself had her own physical ordeals during the series production, though she also notes that these have strengthened her.

Saved by her role

As USA Today tells it, Emilia Clarke actually suffered two brain aneurysms during the production of HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” both times with potentially fatal consequences if her condition had gotten worse.

The actress survived them both however, and she credits her fortitude in the face of these two threats to her health, in the role of Daenerys Targaryen that was hers to portray.

Clarke notes that playing the Mother of Dragons gave her the impetus to put more effort into living, even after her close brush with death. In her words, acting the part of a woman destined to conquer and rule, one who walked through fire unburned, helped to distract her from dwelling too much with the question of her own mortality.

Now that "Game of Thrones" is over, however, she who was once Daenerys of many titles admits that she has been feeling listless, not helped by her not being able to take home any prop for a memento, like a dragon egg.
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