David J. Peterson has clarified his critique on Emilia Clarke’s Dothraki.
Peterson is a renowned American linguist and professional language creator. He is famous for inventing languages like Dothraki and High Valyrian for HBO’s Game of Thrones.
Peterson, in a statement to Entertainment Weekly clarified his stance and said,
“I think Emilia may have misunderstood what I said, because I’ve never criticized her Dothraki. Why would I? Her character was never supposed to speak it like a first language, so she never had to be good at it.”
Peterson argued that actors like Jason Momoa, Amrita Acharia, Elyes Gabel and Steven Cole had a stronger mastery of the language because they “all played Dothraki characters who were supposed to be born with the language and speak it fluently.
He went on to add,
“Criticizing any imperfactions in her Dothraki performance would be like criticizing Colin Firth for stuttering in The King’s Speech. It would be entirely missing the point. In fact, grammatical and punctual errors were built into many of the Dothraki lines – and there were included in the MP3 I recorded for her for this very purpose.”
What has Emilia Clarke said about her Dothraki fluency?
Emily Clarke during an appearance on Seth Meyers’ talk show on Monday said that she heard that the creator of the Dothraki language David J. Peterson had criticized her language skills,
“The creator of the language, I read in an article, said that I sucked at Dothraki. And I was like, ‘What? Bro!’ It’s not real! It’s not a real language! I can’t suck at it because me saying it on the TV, that’s how it goes. That’s the language.”
Meyers agreed with Clarke’s statements and responded saying,
“I love that guy being like, ‘I love to see her order dinner at a Dothraki restaurant. You’re like, ‘Don’t worry, bro. It’s not real!”
Emilia Clarke said that she felt hurt and was really “p**sed” hearing news abbout Peterson’s alleged comments. Emilia Clarke’s comments comes after Peterson, during a 2017 Rolling Stone interview, mentioned that it was “always funny” to hear Clarke speak Dothraki.
Elsewhere in a 2013 blog post, Peterson had mentioned that Clarke spoke High Valyrian “like a natural” despite missing a word here and there. Peterson had mentioned that he was “extraordinarily pleased” with Clarke’s High Valyrian.
Edited by Yesha Srivastava