Welcome Back, Daenerys! Emilia Clarke Switches To Buttery Blond For Fall 2026

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Emilia Clarke is giving fans flashbacks to her "Game of Thrones" character. The actor shared a goofy video on Instagram to debut a new soft, buttery shade that evokes her character Daenerys Targaryen's signature hereditary blond. In the clip, Clarke pops out of a massively oversized shopping bag, chirps "Hi" and flips her new hairdo before dissolving into giggles. And the look is certainly a celebrity blond shade tailor-made to inspire your next salon visit.

Beneath the post, fans dropped a bounty of GIFs of her iconic television character. "The mother of dragons y'all," wrote one commenter. Unlike Daenerys, however, Clarke is a natural brunette. Still, she's flirted with lighter hair shades in the past, including a warm "sunbeam blond" in 2024. But this pale shade is the closest she's come to recreating the dragon queen's signature look since her dramatic chop and platinum dye job shortly after the show's seventh season finale in 2017.

In the past, Clarke revealed she loves how put together she feels with blond hair. "I feel like being this blond is kind of like you're constantly wearing an accessory. So you can wear all black and be like 'I tried! There you go,' whereas when you're brunette and wearing all black it's like, 'Meh,'" she told Harper's Bazaar. Still, she admitted she has mixed feelings about rocking blond hair because of the connection to her "Game of Thrones" counterpart. "It's also very difficult because I get recognized a lot more, and I'm less good at dealing with that," the actor shared.

Despite being a natural brunette, Emilia Clarke appeared on eight seasons of "Game of Thrones" as a platinum blond. Just like "Barbie" star Margot Robbie, who is totally unrecognizable without blond hair, Clarke became practically synonymous with light-colored locks. To portray the silver-haired "Mother of Dragons," Clarke relied on a selection of wigs. The hair pieces were such a big part of her life that she and the show's hairstylist, Kevin Alexander, even gave them nicknames: Dany, Diva, Candice, and Blondie."I feel bad when I meet people, and they realize I'm Khaleesi, and they get disappointed because we look nothing alike," she told InStyle (via W Magazine). "I'm like, 'Sorry, that ain't really me! It's a wig.'"

But even when she dyed her own hair platinum blond in 2017, she admits it took a major toll on her hair. When WhoWhatWear asked for her best beauty tips, she jokingly responded, "Don't ever bleach your hair." To deal with the damage, she opted to chop her hair off. "It's almost the shortest it's been," she told Harper's Bazaar. "[The blond] just killed my hair, and I miss having nice hair!" Besides a cut, she also turned to a cult favorite beauty product to help restore her hair: Olaplex N°.3PLUS Hair Repair Pre-Shampoo Treatment, which is a great option for anyone seeing the telltale signs of hair damage. "Sometimes I sleep in it," she revealed.