# @variety on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DY7UPNLFiGo
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/66077290-variety-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/a5e867fda0.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-05-29T15:00:11.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Variety (@Variety) — https://gondola.cc/Variety

## Caption

#EmiliaClarke woke up the morning after the 2019 Emmy Awards with a goal: to redefine what she saw as success.

By any measure, Clarke was already wildly successful. As well as starring in big-budget #Terminator and #StarWars spinoffs, she was the de facto queen of premium drama, thanks to her portrayal of warrior princess Daenerys Targaryen in HBO’s blockbuster fantasy series #GameOfThrones. But the movies — 2015’s “Terminator Genisys” and 2018’s “Solo: A Star Wars Movie” —underperformed. Then, in May 2019, “Game of Thrones” came to an abrupt and almost universally hated end.

“I have gone through every circuitous route to get to the place that I am now, which is finally being able to be very grateful for everything that ‘Game of Thrones’ did and has given me. I no longer feel trapped in it, or trapped in the result of being in it,” she says thoughtfully. “I feel just really lucky that it happened to me — even luckier that I’ve had time to understand what that was, and now I feel firmly on the other side.”

Clarke says she no longer takes the frosty receptions personally. Eventually, she realized the perfect job — just like the perfect house or the perfect man — might not exist, so she may as well have fun. Which leads to the second step of redefining success: taking on a role “for no other reason than that I would enjoy that job,” she says. “My connection to a project ends when they say, ‘Picture wrap.’ Because it’s not for me to decide what people will think of it.”

Click the link in bio to read the full cover story.

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Location: Hotel Cafe Royal
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Photographs by Zoe McConnell
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Production: Joel Gilgallon/Joon
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Styling: Emma Jade Morrison/The Wall Group
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Hair: Earl Simms/Caren using Sam McKnight
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Makeup: Naoko Scintu/The Wall Group
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Full Look: Dior
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## Stats

- **Views:** 0
- **Likes:** 19,972
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- **Comments:** 128

## Tags

terminator, emiliaclarke, starwars, gameofthrones

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