Emilia Clarke Explains Why She Needs Crutches and Admits She Was Initially Scared of Arnold Schwarzenegger!

Terminator Genisys actress gets candid on The BBC Radio 1 Breakfast Show With Nick Grimshaw

By Zach Johnson Jun 25, 2015 2:51 PMTags
Emilia Clarke, Nick GrimshawThe BBC Radio 1 Breakfast Show with Nick Grimshaw

Premieres may look "glamorous," but sometimes they're just weird. And, according to a recently injured Emilia Clarke, "Crutches make it that much weirder."

On multiple occasions this month, the actress was photographed using crutches to get around town. "They're called Will and Ben, just so you know," she joked on The BBC Radio 1 Breakfast Show With Nick Grimshaw. Regarding her injury, the Game of Thrones actress said, "I've got a stress fracture on my hip."

How did Clarke injure herself? "I want to say it's from Parkour or something—something really brilliant, like I'm trying to vault a wall, but in reality I just slipped. It's really boring," she admitted. "But by the end of the press tour I'm going to come up with like the sickest story ever. It's going to be pretty brilliant."

Clarke was on Nick Grimshaw's radio show to promote Terminator Genisys. "It's a movie! It's a full-on movie!" the British actress said. "And I'm American in it, which makes it even more movie-like, I feel."

Being part of the action franchise felt "epic," she said. "I sound like an idiot, but you're watching action movies and you're like, 'Ooh! Cool! Special effects!' Then you end up doing it and you're like, 'Oh, no, I actually run? I actually fire the guns and I run? Brilliant. OK, I should probably get better at running.'"

Clarke did "a fair few of the stunts" in the movie, which arrives in theaters July 1. "My driving is pretty reckless anyway, so the whole me crashing every single vehicle I got into was a bit apt. It made sense."

"The most badass thing I had to do was I had to fire a grenade launcher. It was very loud!" she said, adding, "Blanks are louder than real ammo, which is ridiculous."

Did Clarke have any trepidation about playing Sarah Connor?

"Naïvely I was like, 'Why would I not want to do this?'...It was only after the fact that I was like, 'Do you have any idea what you've taken on?'"

The actress added, "I tried very hard to be a badass movie star."

Clarke was also excited to work with Arnold Schwarzenegger. "It was brilliant because you're like, 'Ah! This is it! This is it! I'm meeting the icon.' And he is everything that you see, everything that you hear. Meet him in person and it is exactly that," she said. "He's really funny and he doesn't take anything seriously. He was like a joy to have on set. He really, really was fun."

Still, Clarke and her co-stars were nervous to meet the action star. "Before he walked in the room, everyone was kind of tense and quiet and you can hear a pin drop. Then he comes in and he's just brilliant and relaxed and calm and lovely and kind and funny," the actress said. "And you're like, 'Oh, this is not scary at all.'"