#Hallow is interesting because he strikes me as so... adult now

[bonefall]

Are you keeping Hallowflight's and Ivypool's odd friendship they had going on in the DF as apprentices? I know the Erin's forgot about it after the great battle, but honestly thought it was kinda sweet how they became friends in literal cat hell and how Hallow tried to comfort Ivy after she perma-killed Ant. I just thought it was neat and something unique.

I see Hallowflight, after the BOTTE, as really wanting to distance himself from the friends he made there.

With his new Honor Title and this almost immediately legendary story, he went from an outcast loser to suddenly being a hero. His bully Mossyfoot died, and his other bully Troutstream changed her tune. Cats wanted to know him, calling him brave and commending his turnaround.

But that's not the case in the other Clans. ShadowClan outright exiled Redwillow, with the other two being killed in the fight. WindClan is furious at their trainees, and ThunderClan has the guy that almost snapped his son's neck.

Hallowflight's life got better because of his time there, but everyone else is worse off, and associating with them hurts his own shiny new reputation.

And like... that isn't something he's proud of. He knows better than anyone that ALL of them got pulled into the DF because they were angry, lonely, looking for meaning. Almost everyone who was a hard ideologue (Thornclaw, Whiskernose, Ratscar) DIED fighting for those ideas.

And yet, still, he is willing to stay quiet about Dodderheart, Shredbloom, and everyone else, only exchanging an awkward nod at Gatherings, not offering himself as a counterexample in their defense.

If they want to think he's a coward... so be it.

But of all the DF trainees, he's definitely closest to Ivypool, and I think he's willing to throw an endorsement of Harespring once he's out of his Dishonor Title and acting as deputy. He simply won't endanger his own reputation; Hallowflight has a family to consider.

(And then he loses two of his kids to the Impostor anyway, on both sides of the conflict, and Harelight's view of him is forever damaged... so, see how well neutrality worked out in the end.)

[ultrahpfan5blog]

Rewatching the HP and FB movies

I have a tradition of rewatching HP movies at least once a year. This year, I added the two FB movies as well. I know lots of people have well deserved issues with a lot of thing with the franchise and I do too, but I still thoroughly enjoy the movies. All of them. Certainly there are some big issues I have, like how Kloves treated Ron starting from GOF onwards, and how Hermione kind of became a mary sue, and definitely some of the things that were added or removed, like the removal of some of the Riddle memories in HBP, removing the pretty fascinating Dumbledore backstory in Deathly Hallows, the silly inconsistencies like polyjuice not changing the voice of the characters etc... But in general, I still think the movies did a great job capturing the spirit of the books and the casting was just incredible. Especially the adult casting. I know we have only seen one version of Harry Potter on the big screen, but I envision these actors, especially the adults, when I’m reading the books now. Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Robbie Coltraine, Mark Williams, Julie Walters etc... are now the faces I see when I think of those characters. Richard Harris was a terrific Dumbledore for the first two movies, where he had more of grandfatherly, twinkling, vibe. I know people are critical of Gambon in GOF and he admittedly did get the characterization wrong, but I feel he was excellent in POA, OOTP, and especially HBP. Alan Rickman was just so outstanding in the role of Snape. I genuinely feel he should have gotten some Oscar consideration for his performance in DH2. But he was incredible even when he had only a few scenes and had to be super dry in his dialogue delivery. Maggie Smith was similarly wonderful. But these were just the adult regulars, but equally incredible were the phenomenal actors who came for just a few films. There are so many. Gary Oldman, David Thewlis, Imelda Staunton, Helena Bonham Carter, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes, Jason Isaacs, Emma Thompson, Jim Broadbent etc... among many others. A lot of these actors only had a film or two where they had a significant presence, but they showed up in cameos in other films, particularly in DH2. I have a lot of respect for the casting directors for this franchise since they cast basically half of all of British’s well respected acting thespians. Even someone like Bill Nighy appeared, just for two scenes in DH1. Rhys Ifans came in DH1 and was terrific in the two scenes he was in. Ciaran Hinds also was in just one or two scenes and he was also very good. And all these actors felt like they gave it their all and that it wasn’t just a paycheck role.

When it comes to child casting, what strikes me is the amazing continuity the series kept. Its one thing to be able to keep the core child actors like Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, and Tom Felton, but one of the most satisfying aspects of the series is that a lot of the core group of side characters were continuously played by the same actors. Not just Matthew Lewis and Bonnie Wright  and the Phelps brothers, but also Alfred Enoch as Dean, Devon Murray as Seamus, and Joshua Herdman as Goyle. It would be very easy to replace some of these side characters over time and no one would notice, but the continuity makes it so much more enjoyable when in DH2 Seamus helps Neville blow up a bridge based on the fact that we know Seamus from the first movie was known for blowing stuff up. Its the small things that make it so great. Possibly the most accurate bit of casting was Evana Lynch as Luna. I honestly can’t think of a single actor more perfectly cast in the series than her. The core quartet were all lovely. Not always consistent, but more than good enough. I actually think Dan was the weakest actor when the series started, but he made remarkable improvement in the back half of the series, especially OOTP onwards. He is outstanding in DH2 I thought. Tom Felton didn’t always have to do much until HBP, but he was excellent in HBP. He does seem to have been stereotyped a little in the other roles I’ve seen him in but it still means he was great. Emma Watson’s performance fluctuated a bit. She was very good as a kid, then she was kind of bad in GOF and in parts of OOTP, but she found her footing again in HBP and especially in DH1, which I still consider to be her best acting performance to date. I think Rupert was always the most natural actor of the lot. He was probably the most hard done by the Kloves because they kind of typecast him as the comedic sidekick, but I can’t fault Rupert because he was a pretty gifted comic. Like Emma, when he got more scope in DH1, he did an incredible job. I would say Bonnie Wright is maybe the only one who didn’t fully grow into the role for me. It probably has a lot to do with writing, but she also really didn’t share any chemistry with Dan which made that relationship feel pretty flat and forced. But all in all the casting really made these movies and they elevate the movies significantly. But I admit all the craft behind it. Also, some of these movies are close to two decades old and the effects hold up quite well. I think there are scenes in the first movie that look a little dated, particularly the flying scenes, but subsequent movies seemed to find the right blend of practical and visual effects to make the movies look pretty timeless. 

I think all the directors did their job really well. Columbus did a good job of bringing the childlike wonder of the initial books to life, Cuaron brought his more adult quality as the kids grew up, Newell ramped up the scale and the scope, and Yates managed to bring home the darkness. Definitely the films weren’t flawless. Like I mentioned before, there were times when some characterizations were off, some key subplots were eliminated or not handled well, some things added which were not needed etc... but the spirit of the books remains. I have a deep fondness for the movies as I feel I grew up with them as I am basically the same age as all the main child actors in the movie so I grew up and watched them grow up. So while they aren’t in the league of greatest films of all time, but its a remarkably consistent and enjoyable franchise that lasted an entire decade.

When it comes to Fantastic Beasts series, I was excited that Yates and Rowling were developing something new but I also feared what would happen given they didn’t have the structure of a book series to guide them. The fears ended up being fairly valid. The first FB is a pretty enjoyable film. I do think they did a good job creating a likable quartet of main characters and the actors all did a pretty remarkable job. It was also a refreshing change to watch Magical World from an adult POV as well as experiencing a new location and time period as well. The issue with the first film is that the film has two separate storylines which don’t really merge well together. The story of Newt, Jacob, Tina, and Queenie finding and recapturing the suitcase of magical creatures is actually very charming. The film does a nice job of creating some unique magical creatures and adding something new to the Magical World, but then there is a dark and gloomy second plot which doesn’t work as well because it essentially isn’t much of a story other than just showing Credence being abused and manipulated time and time again until the climax. It neither merges well tonally, nor plot wise. The way they try to put Newt at the center of the climax felt very clumsy and unearned. Overall, the first film still has sufficient enjoyable charm and I certainly like Redmayne, Waterston, Fogol, and Sudol. Farrell was a damn good villain. Miller was a little too mannered for my taste but I understand what he was going for. Voight is there for no reason at all in a perplexing subplot that goes nowhere. But still, more positives than negatives. FB2 is where the franchise really dropped the ball for the first time and Rowling’s inexperience as a movie screenplay writer became very obvious. The film is literally a setup for future movie, designed to get characters into certain places where the real story can start. the film essentially has no plot other than a bunch of wizards across Europe are looking for Credence and Credence is searching for his identity. There is really nothing else in the movie. The movie is overpopulated with characters, and Newt ends up even more incidental in this movie since he has no interest in going after Credence himself at all for 2/3 of the movie. All the things that were good about the first movie are lost as Jacob and Queenie only share two scenes together, Tina and Newt only share the last act or so together, Newt and Jacob end up only have a couple of scenes together. Its all rather boring and dull. The performances are fine. Depp was a good enough Grindelwald but I don’t think he was given any more to do other than just be surface level evil. One of the most inspired casting decisions was Jude Law as Dumbledore. While he doesn’t ape Gambon or Harris, he does capture the twinkling spirit of Dumbledore and his scenes are the best. The film also has a rather odd plot concerning Leta Lestrange. It is simultaneously important and completely pointless at the same time. I felt that the character had a compelling backstory and interesting potential but the film barely has time to address it any sort of depth before she gets pointlessly killed off at the end. The film also does a pretty bizarre character assassination of Queenie who makes decision that I really don’t understand. I guess this all boils down to the fact that this story may have worked in Rowling’s head as a book where each character’s internal thought could have been given more depth but what happens is that pretty much every sub story is pretty unsatisfying. Its certainly not an unwatchable disaster, just rather dull and devoid of the spark that the wizarding world movies should have. I hope they can turn things around because the film leaves things at a very peculiar juncture which doesn’t make much sense based on what we know of the HP canon.

[bklyntherapist]

The Gods Will Not Save You: Reflections on Meaning and Existence

“It’s Baltimore, gentlemen. The Gods will not save you.” - Commissioner Ervin Burrell, The Wire

A few years ago, I had to commute from Brooklyn to the Bronx for my job as a social worker at The Legal Aid Society. It was a hellish commute. What should have been a 50 minute to an hour commute, ended up being 75 minutes or longer on most days. (Anyone who lives in New York City can attest to the awfulness of the MTA.)

The only upside to the commute was that I read a lot of books and listened to a lot of interesting podcasts during that time. One morning I was listening to a Zen Buddhist podcast on WZEN. To be honest, I was barely listening. I was tired and a bit hungover. The day had not started yet, and I already wanted it to end.

But something changed somewhere in midtown Manhattan. The quiet monk, speaking in quiet, hallowed tones started shouting into my headphones. Without warning, he started bellowing, “No one is coming to save you. No one is coming to save you. You are on your own. Stop expecting it.” It rattled me. And it still rattles me today.

I think secretly most of us assume that something will come along that will make everything ok. Maybe it’s the perfect partner or the perfect job or a magical amount of money that relieves all of our stresses and where we all feel perfectly content. It fits into how human beings think in narratives. If our life is a story, then surely it will have happy outcomes with a lovely denouement at the age of 85 where they pass away peacefully surrounded by many loved one.

But maybe that’s wrong. Maybe there is nothing that’s going to make it all ok.

***

A patient of mine, who is a senior citizen, recently was reflecting on their life’s work. This person had been involved in leftist politics for a good portion of their life, including working with unions and was even involved in the communist party in an American city. This person had spent a good deal of the 1960s and 1970s for integration and desegregation especially in schools.

“Institutions won’t ever save us,” this person said. “My work didn’t save us.” This person’s voice trailed off as they reflected on their career and on the resegregation of schools in American life in recent years. This statement might strike a young person as cynical, but it struck me as true. This person had dedicated most of their adult life to causes, whether it was unions and strikes or desegregation and anti-capitalist work. And in the age of Trump and resegregation, this person had seen many of the gains they had helped achieve start to regress.

“So what does save you?” I asked them.

This person reflected for a few moments, “My children. My siblings. Just trying to appreciate my last days and just really be here.”

I bring up this story because unconsciously I’ve always thought my work could save me, that it would give me purpose and meaning to my life. But this conversation left me a bit shaken too. What difference does being a therapist make really? It can help a little, but it’s like a slowly leaking faucet trying to fill all the oceans of the earth. What difference does me writing a blog post like matter? Why does it matter if I do anything?

I suspect that many people feel this way on some level about their work and their lives, but it’s too frightening a thought to make conscious. So they find their own ways to fill that void in their lives. Some seek vanity and fame. Others money. Others dedicate themselves to religion. But in my experience, that kind of worship has plenty of insidious effects of its own. The irony is that those things that are supposed to fill the void are the things that make us feel more anxious and insecure. Smarter men than me have said a similar thing,

“ If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.”

***

I didn’t mean for this blog post to turn nihilistic. It started with the idea that “institutions will inevitably fail us,” and it expanded from there. But it’s been a good exercise because I get to consider the “why” of it all a little more deeply than I have for some time.

I don’t think there any perfect solutions for the question of existence. It feels like a bit of a cop-out to say this, but everyone has to find their own answers, I suppose.

But as I’ve started again to reflect on my existence more in the last few weeks, I always go back to the answer that seems the most honest to me: awareness.

Awareness of my own fragility and vulnerability. Awareness of my own mortality. Awareness that there are people I love dearly, and that I need to do whatever I can to help and support them through things, because as a therapist, I know better than most, that people are suffering more than we’d ever like to believe.

And in that same vein, an awareness that my work is valuable even if it is on a tiny, granular level because I spend every day with suffering people at their most fragile. And that means something to me and hem. And in that way, I am trying to live my life as honestly and vulnerably as I can. Today that feels like enough despite the fragile state not only of the world but of my mortality. And maybe that’s enough for now.

[starringemiliaclarke]

Press: Emilia Clarke, the Queen of Dragons, Tells All

  How HBO’s insanely popular hit show turned a young British actress into a feminist, a fantasy icon and a royal fan favorite

    ROLLING STONE – On a recent Monday afternoon, the queen was taking her tea. “Could I just be more English than sense itself and get an Earl Grey?” asks Emilia Clarke from the deep folds of a leather chesterfield sofa in the so-called Drawing Room of her downtown Manhattan hotel. The young waiter is only too happy to oblige, though it’s unclear whether he knows he’s in the presence of the Khaleesi, Mother of Dragons and rightful ruler of the Seven Kingdoms.

  That being said, six seasons into HBO’s Game of Thrones – a cultural phenomenon that plays in no fewer than 170 countries, has inspired countless tattoos and baby namings, and has proved to be the network’s most popular show of all time, with a seventh season set to premiere July 16th – it’s more than likely that he does. Clarke smiles and tucks her feet up under her. “I’m crap at getting recognized,” she confides. “People are like, ‘Oh, hey!’ And I’m like” – she starts yelling – “‘God! Oh, hi! I’m sorry!’ ”

  When I first met Clarke, back in 2013, the actress was 26, still relatively unknown when not wearing her signature GoT blond wig, and not likely to compare herself to her warrior-queen character. She’d still seemed slightly in awe of the fact that she’d gotten the job at all, which was only her third acting role ever. “I’m all too painfully aware of how quickly this can disappear,” she’d told me when we’d met in a Broadway dressing room, where she was rehearsing to play Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

  Four years later, Clarke has maintained her hallmarks – wry humor and ample good will, among them – but it’s clear we’re in another realm. Even in a messy bun and frayed blue jeans, she now comes across as a sort of beacon – poised, almost glowing, a point to which all other attention can’t help but be drawn. In other words, she has a way of commanding the room that seems downright Khaleesi-esque. She has, after all, now spent the bulk of her adult life embodying one of our culture’s most striking images of female domination, while eloquently explaining her onscreen nudity in broadly feminist terms. She’s turned 30 (of which she says, “I was just quietly panicking”). She’s graced the big screen multiple times, including opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator Genisys. And, like the rest of us, she’s lived through Brexit and the ascendency of Trump, or, as she puts it, “ ’16. The fucking year where everything shit happened.” So, times have changed – for better and for worse.

  “You can’t expect everyone to just stop doing their jobs and march every day of their lives,” she says of the volatile political climate. “But we’ve got to be in this shit for the long game.” And for Clarke, being “in this shit” means not being OK with a lot of what goes on around her – a realization that grew and amplified “in a [post-Brexit] era where you suddenly go, ‘What do you mean my views are so vastly different from my neighbor?’ ” Like, for example, her views on being one of the few women on any given set. Or the fact that women consistently have fewer lines than their male counterparts, even when they’re playing the “lead.” Or that actresses must arrive for hair and makeup hours before most of the male stars.

“I feel so naive for saying it, but it’s like dealing with racism,” she says. “You’re aware of it, and you’re aware of it, but one day, you go, ‘Oh, my God, it’s everywhere!’ Like you suddenly wake up to it and you go, ‘Wait a fucking second, are you . . . are you treating me different because I’ve got a pair of tits? Is that actually happening?’ It took me a really long time to see that I do get treated differently. But I look around, and that’s my daily life.”

  She recognizes, of course, that this is a complicated stance to take as a woman who has no doubt benefited hugely from her, ahem, pair of tits. She was Esquire’s Sexiest Woman Alive in 2015 (“My mum bribed them”), and her role on Game of Thrones has been punctuated by momentous scenes in which she happened to be naked. “It doesn’t stop me from being a feminist,” she counters. “Like, guess what? Yes, I’ve got mascara on, and I also have a high IQ, so those two things can be one and the same.” But the complexity of gaining women’s-empowerment cred through such channels explains why she’s also glad about the evolution of her character, a woman who rose literally from the ashes and now seems poised to win the game of thrones. Throughout history, Clarke reminds me, “Women have been great rulers. And then for that to be a character that I’m known to play? That’s so fucking lucky. Anyone who seems to think that it’s not needed need only look at the political environment we’re all living in to be like, ‘Oh, no, it’s needed. It is needed.’ ”

  All of which means that Clarke is now embracing her character’s power in a way that might not have been possible for her when the series first aired, when the dew of Oxfordshire was still fresh upon her. Clarke grew up about an hour outside London in the tweedy British countryside of meat pies and bovine creatures. “You know, I grew up with a stream in the garden and with fields everywhere,” she says. “We used to go mushroom-picking. There were ducks. It was idyllic on every level.” She followed her older brother to St. Edward’s, a private boarding school in Oxford where, as the daughter of a sound designer (who’d started out as a roadie) and a marketing VP (who’d started out at secretarial college), she was somewhat removed from the upper-crust kids of her new milieu. “It was a fancy school,” she says. “And we weren’t that fancy.” She was also an artsy kid at a school that wasn’t that artsy. “People were good at hockey and wanted to be lawyers. I just wanted to be everyone’s friend,” she says. “It was painful – I was on the outskirts, peeping in, going, ‘You guys look fun. Can I come join?’ ”

  After graduation, she applied to RADA, LAMDA and Guildhall, a trifecta of hallowed institutions for British would-be actors, and got rejected from every one. She waitressed, saved up some money, went backpacking around Southeast Asia and India, and then reapplied to “a bajillion schools,” only getting into the Drama Centre London “by the skin of my teeth when I got a phone call saying, ‘This girl broke her leg. The place is free if you want it.’ ”

  Drama school was another venue where she learned her place. She was never the favorite. She was never the ingénue. She played old ladies and bedraggled prostitutes. “They broke us down,” she tells me. “But if you’re a favorite at school, you’re fucked for life. I mean, you come out and you’re like, ‘Hey, where’s my golden egg?’ Whereas when you haven’t had that at all, you’re just like, ‘I will do anything. I will work harder than you could imagine.’ ” She gave herself a year to break into the industry. Right around that deadline, cash-strapped, despairing and casting about for alternative life plans, Clarke – just scraping five feet two, curvy and brunette – got a call from her agents about auditioning for the role of tall, willowy, blond Daenerys Targaryen. She turned to Google for a crash course on George R.R. Martin’s novels and then went in to meet the HBO execs. At some point in the audition, she found herself doing the funky chicken.

  “You wake up and go, ‘Wait a fucking second, are you treating me different because I’ve got a pair of tits'”

  She also managed to broadcast the range HBO was seeking: Clarke had the vulnerability of someone who wasn’t the favorite but also the strength of a young woman who’d grown up with a working mother who had herself risen out of secretarial school to forge a high-powered career. “I was so lucky that I was brought up with a mum who just showed by example,” Clarke says. “It was never spelt out that I would have a harder time in life. My family put a fair amount of onus on wanting to expand your thinking as opposed to shrinking your bottom.”

  This goes a long way toward explaining the more personal reason why 2016 was a shitty year for Clarke. On July 10th, her father – whose behind-the-scenes work got her interested in acting in the first place – passed away from cancer. Clarke was filming a movie in Kentucky and unable to be home for all of his final days. When things got dire, she wrapped the movie early but arrived at the airport in London to learn that she’d just missed him. “I definitely think I’m still in varying degrees of shock,” she says. “There’s no measure for it. There are all of these books about grief, but there’s no guide. Like, ‘Oh, on Tuesday, you’ll feel this, but on Thursday, you’ll be here.’ ”

  Three weeks after her father’s death, Clarke began filming the seventh season of Game of Thrones. A few weeks before it, Brexit had happened. “The world felt like a scarier place once my dad wasn’t in it,” she says. “And then those two things happening in quick succession threw me off balance and made me re-evaluate who I am. And it was in that re-evaluation that I was like, ‘I’m a fucking woman, and there aren’t very many of us performing in the environment that I’m performing in. I need to be incredibly sure of the ground on which I’m standing, and I need to take ownership of the choices I’m making.’ ”

  That included the way she comported herself on set. Clarke’s general approach to the world is self-deprecating levity. “When one spends your days discussing the politics of King’s Landing, it’s very important not to forget to do your penguin dance between takes,” co-star Peter Dinklage says of her capacity for goofing around, while she describes what goes through her mind when acting opposite a mechanical dragon thusly: “I’m like, ‘Is he clenching? Is he farting? What do you want me to do?’ ”

  But over the course of the show, Clarke’s own vulnerability has shrunk as Khaleesi’s power has expanded. “You don’t get to be a mother of dragons without a change or two,” she says. “Being able to encompass and understand the kind of woman who could conquer armies and topple societies allows me, the actor, to stand firmly in those shoes.” Which came in handy on set when something would remind her of her father and literally “take my breath away,” she says. “You underestimate the enormity of it. I didn’t know feeling this way was possible.” In those moments, she’d gather her strength and try to channel that emotion into her work. “I was like, ‘I’m not gonna let you see me cry. That ain’t happening.’ ” Instead, she’d steal away for a moment and then come back to being Khaleesi.

  For Clarke, Khaleesi’s story is about to come to a close. Sometime next year, the final episode of Game of Thrones will air and the role that she’s been playing for almost a decade, the role that “saved my ass in so many ways – propelled my ass, really,” will be over. “There’s going to be a shake-up of my identity, I think,” she says of that inevitability. “And I feel like I’m only going to understand what the last seven years has been when we stop.”

  She promises the upcoming episodes of the epic will not disappoint. “Spoiler alert – I normally don’t spend very much time in Belfast, but this last season I spent a little more time there,” she says, throwing a hint to the GoT obsessives. “It’s a really interesting season in terms of some loose ends that have been tied, some really satisfying plot points, some things where you’re like, ‘Oh, my God. I forgot about that!’ Rumors are going to be confirmed or denied.” But Khaleesi’s plotline will continue through to the end. “I mean, I have no doubt there’ll be prequels and sequels and who knows what else. But I am doing one more season. And then that’ll be it.”

  After that eighth and final season, Clarke will have a freedom that she hasn’t had since she was cast at age 23. The roughly seven months of each year she’s spent waking up at 3 a.m. to get into hair and makeup, the 18-hour days in which she’s pretended to ride a dragon or lead an army or walk naked through fire, will suddenly be hers again. The thought is both daunting and titillating. “It makes me emotional to think about,” she says. “It’s my beginning, middle and end – the single thing that has changed me most as an adult.”

  Not that freedom is here yet. When she returns to London in a few days, it will be for the Han Solo Star Wars prequel, in which she presumably plays yet another bad-ass woman. “All I can say is that she’s awesome,” Clarke tells me. “Like, legit, that’s all I can actually get away with saying. There’s a stormtrooper with a gun, and he’s going to come walking in any second.”

  After Star Wars, Clarke’s ultimate goal is to create the kind of shop that rights the wrongs she’s witnessed: “I would love to start a production company that was just full of nice, funny women,” and where the vibe was one of “‘Yeah, I’ve got a pair of tits, and aren’t they lovely? Aren’t they great? You do too! They’re great, you’re in the club!’ ” In the meantime, she says, she’s been working on expanding her mind rather than shrinking her bottom.

  “I’ve suddenly got a ferocious need to learn things,” she adds. “Like, I listen to podcasts manically – The New York Times and The Guardian and The Economist and TED Talks and Fresh Air. I need information. I’m like, ‘I just want to know as much as humanly possible.’ ” Which means that for all Khaleesi has given Clarke, Clarke’s in the process of reciprocating. “Khaleesi got a little something extra this year, you know what I mean? She got a little something else going on.”

Press: Emilia Clarke, the Queen of Dragons, Tells All was originally published on Enchanting Emilia Clarke