Emilia Clarke: Dothraki good training for Russian lines in 'Ponies'

Emilia Clarke says the Dothraki language she learned for the fantasy drama, Game of Thrones, was excellent training for the fluent Russian she needed to speak in the new spy thriller, Ponies.

"Because I'm an idiot, I first read the scripts and everything's in English and then you sort of vaguely notice that there are italics and [those words are] probably going to be in Russian and you think: 'That'll be fine. I did Dothraki, goddammit,'" Clarke, 39, told UPI in a Zoom interview Tuesday.

"It was only then, when getting the shooting scripts through, you're like: 'What, what? That's too much,' and then the panic attack kind of began, got worse and worse, until I then got the correct Russian teacher and he daily managed that ongoing Russian panic attack," she laughed.

The White Lotus and Love At First Sight actress Haley Lu Richardson, 30, who plays Clarke's friend and colleague Twila in Ponies, joked that she suffered "secondhand exhaustion" from watching Clarke master the new language.

"You were so empathetic," Clarke told Richardson.

"I truly still don't understand how you did that. I am so impressed," Richardson said.

"At the end of every day and at the end of the six-month shoot, I was so exhausted and so proud of myself. And you did all of the same things I did, plus learned another language. I just can't imagine if I was you how proud of myself I would be."

"I'm getting that, but I still think I could have done better," Clarke replied.

Premiering on Peacock Thursday, the eight-episode series is set in 1977 U.S.S.R. It follows Bea (Clarke) and Twila (Richardson,) dubiously dubbed "Persons of No Interest" or "ponies," who become CIA operatives after their spy husbands are killed.

Bea studied Russian at posh Wellesley College and was working for the American Embassy in Moscow when tragedy strikes.

"She's a little goody two shoes. She's just trying to do the right thing," Clarke said.

"She's a secretary at the embassy and she is wildly in love with her beautiful, perfect husband, who dies. As a result, with Twila, she decides to go back to Moscow -- because they ship them back home to America -- in order to find out what happened to Chris, the love of her little life."

Although the show is based in fact -- wives and secretaries were recruited as secret agents in the U.S.S.R. during the Cold War -- Clarke said she and Richardson relied primarily on their scripts as opposed to independent historical research into spycraft.

"The show is loosely based in truth. They're working operatives, very much undercover," Clarke said.

"Because we were meant to be novices, because we were meant to be BAD spies, who didn't know what they were doing and were learning for the first time, it was less relevant for us to really go in with that understanding," she added.

"It was much better for us to have no idea. The research that I did was more particular to where she came from, what her upbringing was, what her university was like, all of those kinds of things."

Richardson said Twila is not as happily married as Bea is when her husband's plane goes down.

"She's there in Moscow, but she's not a secretary. So, Lord knows what she's getting into. She's having a horrible time, but she makes everything an adventure," she added.

"She is herself. She is bold. She is loud. She has a deep, very deep sensitivity that shows itself throughout the season. She is really just unapologetically Twila in a time, in a world, in an environment where that is not really allowed."

Since they are both Americans and their husbands worked together, Bea and Twila are immediately thrown together, despite their vastly different personalities.

"We're kind of joined at the hip pretty early on because our husbands were and then our friendship just evolves through then working together," Clarke said.

Richardson added: "They kind of complete each other. They're the yin and yang, for sure.

"I think, in preparing for Twila and kind of understanding her reasoning for all of her choices throughout the season, I was like, 'Why do I go back?'" Richardson said.

"You, externally, have convinced yourself that your main reason is because you love Chris so much and you want to find out what happened to him," she said, addressing Clarke. "But I don't like being told a lie as Twila and I know I'm being told a lie. So I'm like: '[Expletive] you for that. Tell me the truth.' And I love doing things I'm not supposed to do and shock value and all this kind of stuff."

Throughout the season, the women realize they bring out the best in each other.

"It's really necessary and beautiful for them both, the things they learn from each other and feel safe to feel and express and experience and discover within themselves as friends," Richardson said.

"By the end of the season, by the end of our time filming, I actually think the reason that Twila did this was because of Bea, because she knew that you and her were meant to be in each other's lives."