Emilia Clarke: 'It's remarkable that I'm able to speak'

English actor Emilia Clarke, who played the formidable Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons, on HBO's epic fantasy series "Game of Thrones," is reflecting once more on the brain aneurysms she suffered in 2011 and 2013, during the making of the show in often hostile remote locations.

"It was the most excruciating pain," the 35-year-old star, who went on to films including "Solo: A Star Wars Story" (2018) and "Last Christmas" (2019), told the BBC One program "Sunday Morning" over the weekend. Numerous America trade and consumer outlets provided transcripts of the episode, which is unavailable online in the United States, and only with a purchased TV license in Britain. Crediting her acclaimed series with keeping her focused despite serious injury, she called it "incredibly helpful to have 'Game of Thrones' sweep me up and give me that purpose."

Clarke said that after seeing the initial brain scans, she learned that, "The amount of my brain that is no longer usable — it's remarkable that I am able to speak, sometimes articulately, and live my life completely normally with absolutely no repercussions." The star — who was interviewed in conjunction with her London West End debut, in Anton Chekhov's "The Seagull" at the Harold Pinter Theatre — marveled that "I am in the really, really, really small minority of people that can survive that."

Indeed, she stated, albeit with a chuckle, "There's quite a bit missing. Which always makes me laugh … Strokes, basically, as soon as any part of your brain doesn't get blood for a second, it's gone. So the blood finds a different route to get around, but then whatever bit is missing is therefore gone."

Clarke eventually came to terms with her health condition. "I thought, 'Well, this is who you are. This is the brain that you have.' So there's no point in continually racking your brains about what might not be there."

Her prospects had seemed darker, she wrote in an essay for The New Yorker in March 2019: "I was suffering from a condition called aphasia, a consequence of the trauma my brain had suffered," and, she confessed, "In my worst moments, I wanted to pull the plug. … I asked the medical staff to let me die. My job — my entire dream of what my life would be — centered on language, on communication. Without that, I was lost."

But after spending a week in intensive care, the aphasia went away. "I was able to speak," Clarke recalled gratefully. She underwent a second surgery in 2013 to address another aneurysm in imminent danger of an often fatal burst. Being able to perform in a Chekhov classic in such a high-profile venue — the play opened July 6 — has been for her "a kind of profound experience … It's daring taking such a beloved and well-known play like this and putting it in such a modern, stripped-back, bare [format]," Clarke said. "It's why you do theater. It's so exciting."

And her in case, possibly life-giving.