The first episode of the final season of “Game of Thrones” aired on Sunday. And, ahead of the highly anticipated season premiere, some of the stars of the show posted their own behind-the-scenes shots from the set.
Emilia Clarke, who plays Daenerys Targaryen, shared a photo of herself working with the real-life dragons from the show and it doesn’t exactly look as magical as it does on screen.
The real-life version of Drogon, one of Daenerys’s dragons, is basically a gigantic mechanical rig and a green screen
On Sunday, Clarke posted a photo of herself on top of the real-life version of her beloved dragon, Drogon.
She captioned it, “Me and my baby (dragon) (Drogon) just very excited for you all to see #season8gameofthrones which if I’m not mistaken begins… now. #gulp #enjoy #forthethrone #forthelasttime #buckleupkids”
In the photo, Clarke is hugging the rig with a huge smile on her face, looking as in love as Daenerys does when she looks at Drogon on the show.
Clarke has previously talked about what it’s like to work so closely with dragons that don’t actually exist
Earlier this year, in an interview with Anderson Cooper for “60 Minutes,” Clarke described her first time on the mechanical rig as “very funny” and exciting.
“It was like, ‘I’m getting on the dragon!’ Like we’ve thought about it for ages. And when I first read it, I was, like, genuinely getting tingles reading it, being like, ‘I’m gonna get on my baby. I’m gonna do it.’ So excited,” she said.
She went on to describe the dragon rig as a “hard, green, shell-type thing,” explaining that it’s “manually operated” because people move the poles on either end of it.
“I’m there, kinda trying to, like, yes, badass. And everyone’s like, ‘Don’t look badass. You look like Harry Potter. You look like you’re on a broomstick,'” she added.
Clarke also said that even though the dragon-riding scenes look incredible on television, in reality, they look “kinda weird” during filming.
She also explained that riding the faux dragon sometimes turned into a ‘scary theme park ride,’ as the people who control the rig jerk it around while she’s on it
But although the actress admitted riding the rig was tough, she also said, “It was fun. It was really fun.”
In a 2017 interview with Time magazine, when asked if it was easy for her to be on the back of the fake dragon, she said, “There are certain shots where you’re like, ‘I’m hanging on for dear life, oh my goodness.’ But yes, yes.”
Clarke has also said she has a special sort of connection with the dragons, even though they aren’t real
“There’s something about this maternal connection I had with the dragons from day [one],” she said in the Time magazine interview. “I really got into Daenerys’s head.”
Clarke even got a permanent reminder of her fictional babies back in September 2018 when she debuted a tattoo of all three dragons on her wrist.
