Remember That Time ‘Game of Thrones’ Finale Script Was So Bad Emilia Clarke Read It 7 Times and Cried?

When the final season of Game of Thrones aired, the backlash was fierce. Viewers were shocked, and it turns out the cast was too.

Emilia Clarke, who played Daenerys Targaryen, told Entertainment Weekly that she was stunned when she read how her character’s story would end.

Daenerys would attack King’s Landing, kill thousands of innocent people, and then be killed herself by Jon Snow. Clarke said she had to read the script seven times just to process it.

“What, what, what, WHAT!? Because it comes out of f**king nowhere. I’m flabbergasted. Absolutely never saw that coming,” she recalled. She said she cried and then went for a five-hour walk with blisters on her feet, asking herself, “How am I going to do this?”

When she joined the first table read for the final season, Clarke saw Kit Harington’s reaction to their last scene together. He started crying too. Like her, he couldn’t believe how their story ended.

The Game of Thrones cast reactions at the finale table read pic.twitter.com/Ebdnya6yNB

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Kit Harington later said in interviews that he knew the final season would divide fans. He admitted some people would feel let down, but he defended the cast and crew. “Whatever critic spends half an hour writing about this season and makes their [negative] judgement on it, in my head they can go f*** themselves. I know how much work was put into this,” he said.

He also said he was disappointed Jon didn’t kill the Night King but thought it was a great twist for Arya.

Other cast members also struggled with the finale. Nathalie Emmanuel, who played Missandei, said she was heartbroken over her character’s death, especially since Missandei died in chains after a lifetime as a slave. She wished there had been more scenes with Daenerys or Cersei before her death.

Conleth Hill, who played Varys, was disappointed with how his character faded from the story. He said the seventh and eighth seasons were not his favorite and found it frustrating that Varys lost his usual cleverness.

Lena Headey, who played Cersei, had mixed feelings about her death scene. At first she wished for a bigger fight, but after talking with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, she accepted it as fitting for Cersei and Jaime to die together.

Sophie Turner was happy with Sansa’s ending but wished for more scenes between Cersei and the Stark sisters. Maisie Williams had hoped Arya would face Cersei directly, maybe even kill her, but came to like Arya’s ending. Gwendoline Christie, who played Brienne, said she was dismayed at first by her character’s final moments but understood that the writers sometimes took the story in unexpected directions.

Even years later, the final season remains one of the most debated in television history. Fans and actors alike still talk about what could have been. For Clarke, it’s clear that Daenerys’s fate was just as hard for her to accept as it was for the millions who watched it unfold.

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