2 GoT Stars Messed Up Their Auditions So Bad It’s a Miracle They Landed Their Parts
We know Emilia Clarke and Kit Harrington as the main stars of Game of Thrones — but back in the day, they really screwed up their auditions and almost lost the roles.
Game of Thrones is ultimately one of the biggest and most popular shows on the planet to this day — despite having come to a finale some years ago. There are still millions of fans praising Game of Thrones (apart from the last season, that is), and the stars of this series are rightfully treated as the absolute royalty they portrayed in it.
Thanks to its immense scale, Game of Thrones jumpstarted quite a few careers of previously unknown actors — and for its lead stars, it worked wonders. Emilia Clarke, who played Daenerys Targaryen, and Kit Harrington, who portrayed Jon Snow, benefitted the most from it.
But guess what? They both nearly blew their auditions for the series!
In Clarke’s case, it was just terrible. The young actress showed up and, upon realizing she wasn’t doing well enough, desperately offered to make tea for everyone if they’d accept her (via The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon). Not the feat you’d expect from the Mother of Dragons, right? But weirdly enough, it worked… but in quite a different fashion than she’d expected.
Seeing her readiness to go out of the box to bag the role, the casting directors told Emilia to dance — and after doing some weird chicken-robot moves, she was in. How do chickens or robots or dances relate to Game of Thrones? No idea.
Kit Harrington, however, messed up in a different way. Just the day before his Game of Thrones audition was scheduled, he got into a fight… at McDonald's. Someone offended his girlfriend, and Kit immediately rushed to protect her — and was beaten up and had to show up for the audition with a huge black eye which is really frowned upon (via W Magazine).
While casting directors don’t usually give chances to folks who show up to their auditions with black eyes, the Game of Thrones guys decided that defending his girlfriend in a fight was a very Jon Snow thing to do — so they took Harrington in.
As you can see, both Clarke and Harrington didn’t exactly do their best for their first Game of Thrones auditions, and it’s a wonder they both made it into the show. Just imagine: we could have had very different Daenerys and Jon just because one of the actors got into a fight and another attempted a tea bribe!