Emilia Clarke said she won’t be taking selfies with fans anymore after a traumatic experience made her reconsider how she wants to interact with people when they see her in public.

In a recent interview on the Table Manners podcast, the Game of Thrones star discussed a particular stressful incident when a fan approached her for a photo at an airport.

“I was genuinely walking through an airport and I suddenly started having what I can only believe to be a panic attack brought on by complete exhaustion,” she recalled per Time.

The actor continued, “I was on my own, I was on the phone to my mum saying, ‘I feel like I can’t breathe, I don’t know what’s going on.’ ‘I’m there and the tears are coming out. I’m crying and crying, this guy’s like, ‘Can I get a selfie?’ And I was like, ‘I can’t breathe, I’m really sorry. Just having a minute.’ It was after a few moments like that where I was like, ‘I don’t know how to do this.’”

Clarke said the encounter made her realize she wants to engage in more meaningful and “human-to-human” interactions with her fans in the future. But she said she’s still happy to sign autographs if they want to remember the moment.

“When you do that, you have to have an interaction with that person, as opposed to someone just going, ‘Oi, give us a selfie, goodbye.’,” she said. “Then you have a chat and you’re actually having a truthful human-to-human thing, as opposed to it being this other thing that probably isn’t nice for them and isn’t nice to you.”

The 33-year-old acknowledged that although she signed up for fame, she’s “been trying to navigate how I can [interact with fans] without feeling like my soul is completely empty. Because they don’t really want to talk to you.”

“When you do a signing thing, you can actually look into their eyes and have a proper real human thing,” she added.

Just like that, Clarke found a way to put an end to fleeting selfies and contribute to her own mental well-being.

Source link