Additional Coverage:
Emilia Clarke Traded Dothraki for Russian in New Spy Thriller ‘Ponies’
NEW YORK – From the fantastical realms of Westeros to the clandestine world of Cold War-era Moscow, actress Emilia Clarke is no stranger to mastering new languages for her roles. Her latest linguistic challenge? Fluent Russian, a skill she credits her “Game of Thrones” Dothraki training with helping her achieve for the new spy thriller, “Ponies,” premiering Thursday on Peacock.
Clarke, 39, confessed in a recent Zoom interview that her initial encounter with the script for “Ponies” led to a moment of blissful ignorance. “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,'” she recounted to UPI.
However, the reality of the extensive Russian dialogue quickly set in, triggering a “panic attack” that only a dedicated Russian teacher could manage. “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,” Clarke laughed.
Her co-star, Haley Lu Richardson, 30, known for her roles in “The White Lotus” and “Love At First Sight,” plays Twila, Clarke’s friend and colleague in “Ponies.” Richardson playfully admitted to experiencing “secondhand exhaustion” witnessing Clarke’s dedication to the language.
“You were so empathetic,” Clarke told Richardson.
Richardson, clearly impressed, added, “I truly still don’t understand how you did that. I am so impressed.
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.”
Despite the praise, Clarke, ever the perfectionist, responded, “I’m getting that, but I still think I could have done better.”
The eight-episode series, “Ponies,” is set in 1977 U.S.S.R. and follows Bea (Clarke) and Twila (Richardson), two women dubiously labeled “Persons of No Interest,” or “ponies,” who are unexpectedly recruited as CIA operatives after their spy husbands are killed.
Clarke’s character, Bea, a Wellesley College Russian studies alumna, was working for the American Embassy in Moscow when tragedy struck. “She’s a little goody two shoes.
She’s just trying to do the right thing,” Clarke explained. “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.”
While the show draws inspiration from historical accounts of wives and secretaries being recruited as secret agents during the Cold War, Clarke and Richardson primarily relied on their scripts, rather than extensive historical research into spycraft.
“The show is loosely based in truth. They’re working operatives, very much undercover,” Clarke noted.
“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. 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’s character, Twila, presents a stark contrast to Bea. “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,” Richardson said.
“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.”
Despite their vastly different personalities, Bea and Twila are immediately thrown together due to their husbands’ shared profession. “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.”
She also shared her character’s deeper motivations. “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?’
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. 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 series, the women discover the profound impact they have on 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 concluded. “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.”