In Game of Thrones, Emilia Clarke nailed it as Daenerys Targaryen, the royal-born child who had everything snatched away from her before she was even old enough to fully realize it.
Nowadays, fans of the TV series can’t imagine anyone else fulfilling the role of Daenerys, but WandaVision actor Elizabeth Olsen recently opened up about how she once auditioned for this role.
Unfortunately, things did not go particularly well.
Elizabeth Olsen opens up about her ‘awful’ audition
While Olsen admits that she usually loved auditioning, the Game of Thrones one was the cringiest one of her career.
“I was doing the Khaleesi speech when she comes out of the fire. It was awful. I didn’t get a callback,” Olsen revealed in The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast.
The audition took place in “a small room in New York” with only a camera and the assistant to the casting director as the younger sister of the famous Olsen twins read her lines.
As People points out, this is not the first time that Olsen has opened up about her Game of Thrones audition. To add insult to injury, she has previously revealed that she had to perform the speech twice since HBO didn’t know at the time whether they wanted Daenerys to have a British accent or not.
Of course, with Olsen’s bomb of an audition, it led the way for Emilia Clarke to strut her stuff and this, ultimately, led to her securing the now famous role.
Elizabeth Olsen also went on to win great roles
While it might be hard to imagine Olsen in the role of Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones, her embarrassing audition didn’t stop her from trying out for various roles since then.
Her most notable roles have been set in the Marvel universe. Most recently, she starred in the TV series, WandaVision.
However, she was portraying the character Wanda Maximoff / Scarlet Witch in Marvel movies prior to that, having appeared as this character in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: End Game. She will also appear in the upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Outside of Marvel, she has also appeared in the TV series Sorry for your Loss as well as the movie Godzilla, among other various roles.
So, as you can see, the actor still managed to solidify herself in a major franchise even if she was rejected by HBO in the role of Daenerys.
All seasons of Game of Thrones are available on HBO and Season 1 of House of the Dragon will premiere on HBO in 2022.