Emilia Clarke has shared never before seen photos showing her recovering from brain surgery.
The Game of Thrones star revealed that she suffered and survived two brain aneurysms while filming the show. The second of which nearly killed her.
Emilia, now 32, made an appearance on CBS Sunday Morning where she recalled the dark place she went to after her surgery, and shared images from her hospital stay.
Discussing the impact it had not just on her physical health but mental wellbeing, she revealed. “The first time it was difficult, with the second one I found it much harder to stay optimistic. I coped with it as a day to day thing. I definitely went through a period of being…down. Putting it mildly”.
Six weeks later she was back at work. She said that once she returned to shoot the second season she had no time to question her own mortality because she was too busy playing a badass character who walked through fire. “You go on the set, and you play a badass character, and you walk through fire, and you speak to hundreds of people, and you’re being asked to be – to work as hard as you possibly can. And that became the thing that just saved me from considering my own mortality, yeah”.
Emilia explained that she had just finished filming the first season of the HBO series when she had her first brain aneurysm while working out with a personal trainer.
She was quickly sent for an MRI after the shocking event, where they diagnosed her with a subarachnoid haemorrhage.
This type of hemorrhage is a life-threatening form of stroke, which is caused by bleeding around the brain and a third of patients die immediately or soon after suffering one. Emilia said. “In my worst moments, I wanted to pull the plug. I asked the medical staff to let me die. My job, my entire dream of what my life would be, centered on language on communication. Without that, I was lost”.
