Actress Emilia Clarke may play the Mother of Dragons on HBO’s beloved series Game of Thrones , but as she told Stephen Colbert, she released the mother of all secrets in a conversation with her own mother when she gave away the ending of the show, according to The Hollywood Reporter .
Appearing on Tuesday’s Late Night With Stephen Colbert , Clarke, who plays Daenerys Targaryen on the epic sword and sorcery fantasy, Clarke admitted she has violated the show’s strict rules for actors and crew when she let slip the ending to the show’s eighth and final season. When Colbert pressed her on whether she had ever committed the biggest no-no for one of the top-rated shows in the era of “no spoilers” and leaked episodes coming out early, Clarke admitted she had.
“I’ve got to be honest, I did… I wasn’t supposed to, I told my mum.”
Luckily, according to Clarke, there’s no need for showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss to worry about the rest of the show’s legions of fans finding out how it ends prematurely.
“The good thing about telling my mom was that she’s a vault. Because she’s [already] forgotten it.”
Clarke explained how she found out about her mother’s casual forgetfulness over a secret that millions of fans would do battle with a White Walker to possess. This happened when she mentioned offhandedly in a conversation to her mom that she already knew how it was all going to play out for the Targaryens, the Lannisters, and the Starks – and her mom couldn’t recall.
“I’m kind of jealous of your mom,” said Colbert.
“If she falls asleep on a plane, I’m quite worried she’s going to say it [talking in her sleep] and not know it happened,” Clarke replied.
However, for Clarke herself, she says she’ll never forget what it felt like to read the script for the final episode of the show that has been a huge force in her life for nearly a decade, saying it moved her to the point where she started crying.
“I went for a very long walk… I couldn’t quite handle that,” she said. “It should have been raining, it was that kind of a moment,”
During the interview, Clarke also addressed her recent revelations that she suffered a pair of brain aneurysms and underwent surgery for them during the filming of Game of Thrones . She told the late-night host that the experience changed her perspective on life and made her feel lucky to have survived.
There’s no word on whether her character survives the final six episodes of Game of Thrones , which begins airing on April 14.