Emilia Clarke may play one of the fiercest and most intense characters on television as Daenerys Targaryen on “Game of Thrones,” but it took a bit of silliness to help her land the job.
While presenting Clarke with the Britannia Awards for British Artist of the Year on Friday night at the British Academy Britannia Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, “GoT” co-creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss recalled her auditions for the role.
Even after showing HBO executives the pilot for “GoT,” Clarke was asked to audition again for the president of the network.
The meeting took place in “HBO’s corporate theater, which was large, dimly lit and empty except for us two and the president of HBO,” Weiss said. “We were smiling. He wasn’t. It was quite possibly the least inviting audition environment we had ever witnessed.”
After Clarke’s initial reading, said president remained poker faced.
“Emilia asked if there was anything else she could do to lighten the mood and David asked, ‘Can you dance?’ And without missing a beat, Emilia did the robot,” Weiss said. “She did it with commitment and she did it well…and even the president had no choice but to smile. She got the job 10 seconds after she left the room and the two of us ran to tell her before she left the building because letting her get on an 11-hour flight home without knowing seemed like cruel and unusual punishment.”
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In her acceptance speech, Clarke suggested that Weiss and Benioff “deserve their own bravery award for hiring someone whose biggest job up until than was catering parties dressed as a Snow White.”
Jim Carrey was presented with the Charlie Chaplin Britannia Award for Excellence in Comedy by his “Dumb and Dumber” director Peter Farrelly. While Carrey did joke a few times during his remarks, he delivered a mostly serious and politically charged speech.
The “Kidding” star didn’t mention Pres. Donald Trump by name but he didn’t have to. “We need to be clear: Shamelessness is not, and will never be a superpower,” Carrey said. “It is the mark of a villain, kidnapping children is not what great nations do. One half of America at this moment believes there is a sinister deep state diabolically plotting to what? Give them healthcare?”
“We in America are misinformed,” he also suggested. “Reality shows have warped our idea of what a hero is or what the truth is so tonight I’d like to dedicate this award to those who remind us of our virtues, who remind us of the truth, to Sir Charles Chaplin, who battled McCarthyism into exile, to Christopher Steele who tried to pull a thorn out of the paw of an ungrateful beast, to Christine Blasey Ford [and] to Colin Kaepernick. He’ll stand for the anthem when the anthem stands for him.”
Carrey closed by saying, “I know this [speech] wasn’t funny, but it’s not very funny right now. I want it to be and I will be again but god damn it let’s get the balance back.”
Earlier in the evening, Carrey told Variety that he’s hoping things will change with the midterm elections. “I think that we are going to vote in a new government and if we don’t we will enter a dark age,” he said.
Carrey added that he felt “angry, disillusioned, and confused and just wishing like a brother or a sister I could say something or offer something to the Trump voter, to say, ‘Keep an open mind, please. This is the moment in our country where you have to really make an informed decision and you gotta see it all. You can’t just see ‘The National Enquirer’ and Fox News.’”
The night’s other honorees included Cate Blanchett, Damien Lewis, Steve McQueen and Kevin Feige.
Jack Whitehall hosted the festivities, which ended with Carrey grabbing some laughs by returning to the stage disheveled and pretending to be drunk and downing a bottle of champagne.