Emilia Clarke recalls her “catastrophic failure” Broadway debut in Breakfast At Tiffany’s
The Game Of Thrones alum is set to hit the West End stage in Chekhov's The Seagull
Aux News Emilia Clarke
Instead of manning dragons or lighting whole cities on fire, Game Of Thrones star Emilia Clarke is heading to the West End stage in Anton Chekhov’s play The Seagull. The show was postponed in 2020 due to COVID-19.
This won’t be the first time Clarke has made a turn from acting on screen to the stage—she made her Broadway debut in 2013's production of Breakfast At Tiffany’s as the elusive Holly Golightly. The character was made famous by Audrey Hepburn in the 1961 film.
Unfortunately, her performance failed to capture the same adoration as Hepburn’s, with critics widely panning Clarke in the role. The New York Times described Clarke’s Holly as “an under-age debutante trying very, very hard to pass for a sophisticated grown-up,” while The Hollywood Reporter said Clarke contained “neither softness nor fragility in her grating Holly.”
While that type of criticism would make even the best of actors decide to scurry from the stage forever, Clarke opens up in a new interview with the BBC about the “catastrophic failure” of her Broadway debut and returning to the West End.
“It was just not ready,” admits Clarke. “Was I ready? No, I was definitely not ready. I was a baby. I was so young and so inexperienced.”
Following four Russians as they live on an isolated country estate, The Seagull will have Clarke portraying Nina, a young woman with hopes of becoming an actress.
After almost a decade of being absent from the stage, Clarke says she still has jitters about people’s perception of her. “It’s 10 times more frightening because there’ll be people wanting to go and say, ‘Well she can only act on camera, she clearly can’t act on stage,’ which is obviously the biggest fear,” says Clarke.
Though, Clarke hopes fans of her previous work in Game Of Thrones will come to the Russian play, despite the lack of fantastical creatures frolicking around.
“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,’” she says. “Spoiler: I’m not on a dragon at any point during this play.”
Unfortunately for the dragon enthusiasts of Clarke’s fanbase, her upcoming mystery role in Marvel’s series Secret Invasion will only have the green-skilled Skrulls who might shape shift into dragons. Who knows!
17 Comments
“an under-age debutante trying very, very hard to pass for a sophisticated grown-up”I know she wasn’t a debutante, but isn’t this basically who Holly is?
Breakfast at Tiffany’s has quite an interesting history on stage. The first production, with the very promising casting of Mary Tyler Moore and Richard Chamberlain, was heavily rewritten by Edward Albee of all people after the initial tepid reviews, resulting in something so terrible that it became the first Broadway show cancelled before a single public showing. Everyone greatly respected the crew’s integrity in swallowing the loss rather than subject people to a show they knew sucked, and they went on to a lot of great stuff.
Back in 1985 fifteen year old me saw The Seagull at La Jolla Playhouse and was very surprised to have Phoebe Cates on stage as Nina. This was a year after Gremlins. It’s a great role for a young actress with even an ounce of frustration. Six years later she came back (with Jon Lovitz!) as a subtle and affecting Irina in Three Sisters.It’s hard to imagine Emilia Clarke not doing Chekhov well. Heck by now she’d probably do a great Holly Golightly.
pretty easy to imagine her doing it poorly, just look at her last few roles
And I said “What about ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’?”She said “I think I wasn’t quite readyAnd as I recall, the critics made a bunch of dragon jokes.”And I said, “Well, that’s one thing it got.”
God that song is so awful
For some reason it isn’t a song I’ve ever heard just once – I won’t hear it for years, and then I’ll hear it several times in the same day. It’s as if, every few years, the universe lets down its guard, and that fucking song races to fill the void.
It’s such a pathetic Nice Guy anthem. Like, if you were looking to satire a whiny loser making a futile effort to win back his ex you couldn’t do better. “Let’s get back together because uh….we watched that one movie together one time.”
It used to loop at work constantly. As a massive Audrey Hepburn fan, that felt like a goddamn curse.
‘oh how frustrating, she’s not on a dragon, this isn’t what I paid for,’
“On a dragon” wouldn’t happen to be secret code for “gets her tits out”, would it?
Well, she spent eight years not being very good on TV too, so…
“an under-age debutante trying very, very hard to pass for a sophisticated grown-up,” Isn’t that the character?
Whoa, whoa, whoa, there, Anarwen. You can’t just assume a modern AV Club writer has any knowledge of classic literature or cinema, or that they could be bothered to google a synopsis of it.
I don’t blame her, it’s hard for anyone to step into a role so famously associated with a beloved icon. Not sure anyone could truly make that work.
Hang on a secondan under-age debutante trying very, very hard to pass for a sophisticated grown-up,That seems kinda like who Holly Golightly is?
“The Seagull will have Clarke portraying Nina, a young woman with hopes of becoming an actress”
Seems perfect for Clarke, maybe one day she too will learn how to act.