Emilia Clarke revealed why she was driven to tears her very first day on GoT

For the past eight years, Emilia Clarke has been kicking ass as Daenerys Targaryen on Game of Thrones. But while her character may be the Unburnt and the Breaker of Chains, Clarke—like the rest of us—has dealt with plenty of bad days. With less than a week to go until the show’s final season premieres on April 14th, the actress remembered her difficult first day on set eight whole years ago—which, apparently, ended in tears.

Season 1 of the series saw Daenerys traveling with the Dothraki on horseback, and apparently, for Clarke, riding an unwieldy horse while trying to act during her very first day was no easy task. As part of an HBO interview series called “The Cast Remembers,” the actress explained that it was raining that day, and she kept almost falling off her horse.

"I'm hanging on for dear life, and I just remember shouting, 'Please stop filming!'" she recalled with a laugh. "Turn around and I'm like, 'Oh my god.' There's like the whole crew, and I just cried. So that was my first day on Game of Thrones," she concluded with a facepalm.

Luckily, things improved. Clarke said that playing the Mother of Dragons wound up being an incredibly rewarding experience.

"I had more spine-tingly, goose bump, joyful, punch-the-air, 'yay' days on this show that anything in my life," she said. "That's the thing about Dany. Each season she gets better. Every season there's something else bigger than the last season and better than the last season."

We couldn’t agree more.