Emilia Clarke has revealed she no longer likes to take selfies with fans after she was asked for one while having a panic attack in an airport.
Speaking on the “Table Manners” podcast, the Game of Thrones actor recalled how she was alone at the time and started to hyperventilate.
“I was genuinely walking through an airport and I suddenly started having what I can only believe to be a panic attack brought on by complete exhaustion,” Clarke told podcast hosts Jessie and Lennie Ware.
“I was on my own, I was on the phone to my mum saying, ‘I feel like I can’t breathe, I don’t know what’s going on.’ ‘I’m there and the tears are coming out.
“I’m crying and crying, this guy’s like, ‘Can I get a selfie?’ And I was like, ‘I can’t breathe, I’m really sorry. Just having a minute.’ It was after a few moments like that where I was like, ‘I don’t know how to do this.’”
Clarke explained how the incident made her rethink how she interacts with fans, revealing that she’d rather sign something as opposed to taking a selfie so as to facilitate a more meaningful “human-to-human” exchange.
“When you do that, you have to have an interaction with that person, as opposed to someone just going, ‘Oi, give us a selfie, goodbye,’” the 33-year-old said.
“Then you have a chat and you’re actually having a truthful human-to-human thing, as opposed to it being this other thing that probably isn’t nice for them and isn’t nice to you.
“When you do a signing thing, you can actually look into their eyes and have a proper real human thing.”
In March, Clarke revealed she suffered two brain aneurysms that required life-saving surgery. The actor said she was unable to remember her own name after the haemorrhage left her in intensive care.
Discussing the experience on “Table Manners”, Clarke said she didn’t tell anyone at Game of Thrones about her first aneurysm immediately.
“With the first one, I couldn’t let them know what had happened until they knew that I wasn’t going to die,” she said.
“I just was, and consistently, so scared of being fired for whatever reason.”
