Emilia Clarke's 'Game of Thrones' character is "like another limb" to her.
Emilia Clarke
The 32-year-old actress has been playing Daenerys Targaryen on the HBO fantasy drama since it began in 2011, and as the show prepares to air its eighth and final season later this month, she has said she's going to find it tricky to let go of the beloved Mother of Dragons.
Speaking to E! News, she said: "I mean, as an actor, as a schmaltzy actor, I believe that every character that you play, they kind of stay in you a little bit, you keep them with you. But yeah, Khaleesi it's like another limb. She's just so much a part of who I am."
Although details of the final season are being kept under lock and key, it's already known that Daenerys and her dragons will make their way into Winterfell - the home of Sophie Turner and Maisie Williams' characters Sansa and Arya Stark, as well as Kit Harington's Jon Snow - and Emilia recently said stepping onto "someone else's turf" was a "surreal" experience.
She said of bringing her character to Winterfell: "It's really surreal. I mean, you play into what it feels like for the character as well, because it's new and it's odd, and you're coming into someone else's turf and you've got a lot of actors that you know really well, who were like, 'This is our home.' Then you come in and you're like, 'I know this only from the television; I've never been in this space here before in my life.'"
Meanwhile, the star recently revealed she "completely broke down" during her last day on the set of the show, whilst trying to give a "little speech" to the cast and crew.
She said: "I started to do a little speech, not because I'm a pretentious actor, but because every time we said goodbye to a character, showrunners David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] would give us a gift and the crew would be around and everyone would stop and you'd sort of say a few words and it was really beautiful.
"I mean, I got three words in before I just completely broke down. You just hold it in and you're holding it in and you're holding it in, and then I just burst into tears like a complete idiot.
"Then we cracked open the champagne, but it was then that I realised that alcohol is a depressant! So it was less a celebratory champagne, it was more kind of like, [pretends to sob] 'We did it! We got to the finish line!'"
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