Emilia Clarke calls her Broadway debut a 'catastrophic failure': 'I was definitely not ready'
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Emilia Clarke did not enjoy her time acting opposite a cat on Broadway.
The Game of Thrones star, who makes her West End debut later this month in The Seagull, was disappointed with her 2013 performance in Breakfast at Tiffany's, which marked her first turn on the Great White Way, even going so far as to call it a "catastrophic failure."
"It was just not ready," Clarke, 35, told the BBC. And the show wasn't the only thing she thought was a little too green.
"Was I ready? No, I was definitely not ready," she said. "I was a baby. I was so young and so inexperienced."
Gareth Cattermole/Getty Emilia Clarke
Clarke played the role of Holly Golightly, made famous by Audrey Hepburn and her little black dress in the 1961 film based on Truman Capote's 1958 novella. Richard Greenberg's stage version found Clarke acting opposite Cory Michael Smith as Fred and Vito Vincent the cat as, well, Cat. (Vito shared the role with Montie and Moo.)
In 2013, EW critic Thom Geier gave Breakfast at Tiffany's a C+, pointing out "too many scenes that just sit there, failing to delight and robbing the play of any semblance of narrative momentum." He called Clarke's performance shrill rather than insouciant (although he did take the time to praise her shapely figure for filling out her costumes).
Between this experience and her large television fan base, Clarke says she's "petrified" about her U.K. stage debut. "I'm profoundly aware of the fact that there will be people who love Game of Thrones and are seeing it for that," she said. "Hopefully they'll come and go, 'We just came to see the Mother of Dragons, oh how frustrating, she's not on a dragon, this isn't what I paid for.' Spoiler: I'm not on a dragon at any point during this play."
Clarke stars as Nina in the Anton Chekhov play alongside Tom Rhys Harries as Trigorin.
The Seagull makes its bow June 29 at the Harold Pinter Theater in London and will close on September 10.
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