The Only Bad Actor in Game of Thrones

Let me make this clear immediately. I LOVE Dany. Dany is one of the strongest, most well-written women ever and her chapters in the novels are some of my favorites. George R.R. Martin wrote a fantastic character with a great backstory and one of the most interesting storylines in the books.

That being said. The actress who plays Dany in the HBO series is TERRIBLE. Let me make another thing clear, she doesn't ruin the character, but it makes her scenes hard to watch for me. It actually took me till mid-way through season 2 to realize this. I think my brain was actively trying to push away the information.

Dany is played by Emilia Clark in the TV show and shes terrible. She delivers her lines like a young actress with no formal training, but doesn't have the natural skill to pull it off. Every line comes out slightly..staged, fake kind of. Like she's actively struggling to say it with the right amount of emotion instead of just doing it.

The reason this is such a big disappointment for me is that every other character was cast so perfectly. Sean Bean was fantastic as Ned Stark. He embodied the character, you truly believed he was an honorable man, maybe honorable to a dangerous fault. The point is Sean Bean is a great actor and made the character pop, he made it believable, as was his job as an actor. Another good example is Tyrion. Peter Dinklage is perfect. Literally perfect for that part. He delivers every line exactly like he should. Every mannerism he has, every action he takes, every line he delivers, is perfect. Everything about the performance screams awards. And he deserves every single one of them. Which ones? Doesn't matter, every award. Basically that cast in the show is perfect, not every actor is as good as Sean Bean and Peter Dinklage, but they play their part and they play it exceptionally well.

And there's my issue with Emilia Clark's performance. Maybe she's not a bad actor, maybe in another role in a different show or movie she'd be good. I don't know. But in this show, surrounded by all these amazing actors who are all at the top of their game she comes off as stilted and unreal. Every line out of her mouth comes off like its being read off a cue card a few feet behind the camera.

Which makes me mad, because as I said before Dany is one of my favorite characters and is one of the strongest females characters I've read in a book in a long time. She's a strong independent woman who has an excellent character arc and ends up ruling the badass tribe of Dothraki savages. Dany does all that, and with a better actress it would be believable, but with this one it just doesn't work to me.