“Can you imagine? I’d have been driving a couple of Porsches!”

Emilia Clarke addresses rumors of how much main Games of Thrones stars were paid per episode

"Can you imagine? I'd have been driving a couple of Porsches!"

By Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel is a news writer at **. He began writing for EW in 2022.

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May 30, 2026 1:22 p.m. ET

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Emilia Clarke on 'Game of Thrones'. Credit:

- Emilia Clarke addressed rumors about the massive salaries *Game of Thrones* stars were getting per episode.

- "We didn't earn that much," she said.

- Clarke said she was able to pay off her parents' mortgage thanks to her salary from the show.

Yes, Emilia Clarke earned a fortune from *Game of Thrones* — but she says the rumored salaries for the show's main cast have been greatly exaggerated.

The actress, who portrayed Daenerys Targaryen on all seven seasons of the HBO fantasy show, recently clarified that the reported wage of $300,000 per actor per episode was inaccurate.

"We didn't earn that much," she told *Variety*. "Can you imagine? I'd have been driving a couple of Porsches!"

Emilia Clarke in New York City on Jan. 14, 2026.

John Nacion/WireImage

Still, the funds she secured allowed her to pay off her parents' mortgage, and she remains appreciative of her time on the series despite having complicated feelings about the fame it brought.

"I have gone through every circuitous route to get to the place that I am now, which is finally being able to be very grateful for everything that *Game of Thrones* did and has given me," Clarke said. "I no longer feel trapped in it, or trapped in the result of being in it. I feel just really lucky that it happened to me — even luckier that I've had time to understand what that was — and now I feel firmly on the other side."

Clarke said she'd never heard of the fantasy series when she first received the opportunity to audition. "[My agent] said, 'You ever audition for *Game of Thrones*?' I was like, 'You've just said gobbledygook. I have no idea what we're talking about,'" she remembered. Once she got the part, though, she celebrated hard: "I genuinely had three weeks of parties."

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Elsewhere in the interview, Clarke recalled her disappointment at losing the award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series to *Killing Eve*'s Jodie Comer at the 2019 Emmys. "I'm embarrassed to admit that not winning an Emmy was a really significant thing," she said, adding that she thought at the time, "Everyone's over *Game of Thrones* now — you're old news."

Emilia Clarke in New York City on Jan. 14, 2026.

Jason Mendez/Getty

Clarke skipped the after-parties following the ceremony, which she now regrets. "I do not like that person," she said, noting that she promised herself never to "behave that way again" in the future. "Because clearly," she added, "I have a 13-year-old's idea of success."

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The *Ponies* star chose to shift her perspective so that rather than chasing critical or commercial validation, she now accepts work "for no other reason than that I would enjoy that job." She added, "My connection to a project ends when they say, 'Picture wrap.' Because it's not for me to decide what people will think of it."

Now that she has reoriented her ideas about success, she's excited about her upcoming romantic drama *Next Life*. "This was one of the first times since making my decision about success that I realized how profoundly true that was," she said. "It's given me everything I ever needed, including a real friendship circle."

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Source: “EW Sci-Fi”