Emilia Clarke: I love that part of meIm like one-eighth Indian
Emilia Clarke covers the December-January issue of Harper’s Bazaar. The cover and photos are… okay. I think Emilia is very pretty, but I’ve yet to see a magazine editorial with her where I think “they really nailed the styling here, she looks amazing.” She seems to have gotten the cover mostly for her promotional work as one of the faces of Dolce & Gabbana, which… okay, I guess I just have to get used to the fact that they give magazine covers to women to promote their endorsements now. Anyway, Emilia chats about love, how much she loves Italians, and how she’s apparently part Indian? I’m not so sure about that, Em. You can read the full Bazaar piece here. Some highlights:
She’s one-eighth Indian: “It’s this epic story: My grandmother was colonial Indian, and it was a big old family secret because her mum had an affair with someone in India. She would wear makeup to make her skin look white.” Granny passed away when Clarke was 16, and the teenager took off for India with her boyfriend to scatter the ashes. “She loved India more than she loved England. F–k, yeah. I love that part of me—I’m like one-eighth Indian.”
She loves Italians too. “People in Italy let you know how they feel. I like that I don’t need to guess. There’s something so addictive about their personalities.”
She stopped believing in Prince Charming. “You’d love to, though, right? You’d love to believe there is just one. There is ‘the one’ for particular parts of your life—you change as you get older. So when I was in my teens, there was ‘the one’ for my teens, for sure, and then, you know, there’s ‘the one’ for the next time of your life. There’s this Buddhist philosophy that says you can only really understand yourself through your interactions with other people.”
On worrying about how others perceived her at the start of her career: “I think in the early days I second-guessed everyone. I mean, I do that in life anyway, but especially with fame and become successful, and strangers knowing you more than your circle of friends, I would worry about what people thought of me. Then you get to a point where you’re like, ‘You know what? I’m okay.”
I’m half-Indian. I carry that with me, visually, genetically, spiritually, whatever. How do I feel about Emilia claiming that she’s one-eighth Indian? I don’t know. It came as a surprise, and I guess it’s better this way, where she just drops that claim in a magazine interview years after she became famous. She’s not claiming to have lived the experience of an Indian woman or a woman of color. She’s not out here, starting sentences with “as a proud brown sister…” It’s not like she’s twirling in a L’Oreal ad, bragging about being “part Cherokee” all of a sudden.
Photos courtesy of Mariano Vivanco for Harper’s Bazaar.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pLHLnpmirJOdxm%2BvzqZmbm1nbX96e8SmoKWhkZSwra3RpJyYoY%2BhvLexvq2fmqyPpa6zwL6onZillZ66oLjIpJyYp56aeqa1xqGroZeZo7Gqrc1o