The perfect Daenerys Targaryen face, Emilia Clarke, was apparently not HBO’s original choice to portray Khaleesi! Are you surprised and shocked? We are as well! As it turned out, another British actress had been roped into the pivotal role. But Clarke got super lucky!
Daenerys Targaryen was originally portrayed by Tamzin Merchant
The character of Daenerys is the most significant departure from the original cast of the series. Tamzin Merchant, not Clarke, originally portrayed everybody’s beloved Khaleesi. She became famous for her roles as Catherine Howard, Henry VIII’s fifth wife, in Showtime’s The Tudors, and as Imogen Spurnrose, in Carnival Row on Prime Video. Merchant was the first person to don the platinum blonde wig and attempt to reclaim the Targaryen dynasty to the Iron Throne. She portrayed key scenes in the failed pilot, including Dany’s union with Khal Drogo and the first version of the couple’s infamous sex scene, which was actually much less sexually abusive and more faithful to the book than what ultimately ended up on the show.
Merchant, a talented actress in her own right, played Daenerys in the series’ first pilot episode. Or, at least, that’s what her castmates and crew members from the first run have to say. We have to take their word for it because the show’s pilot was never made available to the public. Both Momoa and Benioff’s then assistant Bryan Cogman praise Merchant’s work in the book Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon: Game of Thrones and the Untold Story of the Epic Series, which describes the early stages of the creation of the cultural juggernaut that eventually became Game of Thrones. However, there was something that just wasn’t right in her casting.
It’s difficult to figure out the source of the problem. Those involved in the pilot and subsequent recasting have been rather quiet about it, with casting director Nina Gold only saying in an interview with Vanity Fair “It’s terrible to disappoint… It’s difficult to let down… That’s hard. It’s tough, but you’ve got to get it right, ultimately.” In any case, it all appears to come down to Merchant’s lack of chemistry with Momoa in the end. In Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon, HBO’s former programming president claims that Merchant’s scene with the actor cast as Khal Drogo simply did not work, while Momoa states that he only truly got “there” on his scenes when Clarke joined the team: “When Emilia got there that’s when everything clicked for me,” he says.