“Game of Thrones” star Emilia Clarke said she worried she could be fired after sustaining a brain injury while working on the hit HBO drama series.
The 37-year-old actress discussed her thoughts while speaking with the U.K.-based Big Issue in an article published Monday.
“When you have a brain injury, because it alters your sense of self on such a dramatic level, all of the insecurities you have going into the workplace quadruple overnight,” Clarke told the outlet.
“The first fear we all had was: ‘Oh my God, am I going to get fired? Am I going to get fired because they think I’m not capable of completing the job?’” she said.
The actress mentioned how the brain aneurysm occurred during a break in filming and said only certain crew and cast members were aware of what was going on. Clarke recalled thinking about how the stress of returning to the set could trigger another medical issue.
She said her thought was, “Well, if I’m going to die, I better die on live TV.”
The “Game of Thrones” actress founded a charity to develop better mental health support for people who had been through similar experiences.
“Having a chronic condition that diminishes your confidence in this one thing you feel is your reason to live is so debilitating and so lonely,” Clarke said. “One of the biggest things I felt with a brain injury was profoundly alone. That is what we’re trying to overcome.”
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During the interview, she also discussed feeling how she “couldn’t carry on” following the brain injury. She said she instructed medical staff to let her die because she believed her acting days were over. Now, she sees enduring the event as a positive.
“It has given me a superpower,” Clarke said.
The actress had her first aneurysm, which caused a stroke and a subarachnoid hemorrhage, in 2011. She discussed the experience in a personal essay published in The New Yorker in 2019.
“I was suffering from a condition called aphasia, a consequence of the trauma my brain had suffered,” she said at the time.
“In my worst moments, I wanted to pull the plug,” Clarke added. “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.”
The aphasia was temporary, and eventually, the actress was able to speak again. Clarke had a second surgery on another aneurysm in 2013.
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