Fans of Emilia Clarke know her best as the very determined and strong-willed Mother of Dragons on Game of Thrones. But in real life, Clarke is sweet and charming, and she actually has something very significant in common with her character in Last Christmas. In March 2019, Clarke wrote a personal essay for The New Yorker in which she opened up about having a stroke and aneurysm in 2011. "The diagnosis was quick and ominous: a subarachnoid hemorrhage," Clarke wrote.
Clarke has since recovered, but she felt a certain kinship with her character in Last Christmas, who shares in the trailer, "I was really sick, and I nearly died." That experience is a big part of Kate, and, in an interview with Extra, Clarke revealed it helped her identify with her character. "It definitely added to the kind of truth that I could bring to it because she had her health crisis at the same... pretty much the same age that I did," she said, noting, "That time in your life is really confusing... and it made me empathize with her a lot more." Clearly, Clarke understood her character.
