Emilia Clarke studied Adolf Hitler to prepare for the ‘Game of Thrones’ finale.
The 32-year-old actress had a powerful scene where her character, Daenerys Targaryen, addressed her army in High Valyrian and the British star studied history’s most menacing non-English speaking orators, including the Nazi leader, in order to get the powerful tone right.
She said: "In giving all these speeches in fake languages, I watched a lot of videos of — now it seems funny — dictators and powerful leaders speaking a different language to see if I could understand what they were saying without knowing the language.
"And you can! You absolutely can understand what Hitler’s f***ing saying, these single-focus orators speaking a foreign language."
Although Emilia’s part of the scene was shot in front of a green screen, she was still very nervous about the speech and spent two months practicing her lines.
She told Variety: "This speech meant so much to me. I was so worried that I was going to f**k it up. I stayed up so late every night for like two months. I said it to my cooker, I said it to my fridge.
"I said it to all of Belfast out my window! Well, the window was closed because I didn’t want people to think I was actually barking mad."
Despite her fears and a sleepless night before filming, the actress was stunned to nail the scene perfectly on the first take.
She said: "I had my dialect coach literally within spitting distance because I was convinced I was going to mess it up.
"Then the weirdest thing happened — I walked onset, didn’t need a rehearsal, and I got through the whole thing perfect on the first go. The rest of the day it was like Daenerys was just with me.
"That’s the only time I got through that speech without getting anything wrong, when it was on camera. If you had asked me to do it the next day, I’d already forgotten it."
Emilia Clarke studied Hitler for Game of Thrones speech
