Elizabeth Olsen Opened Up About Auditioning for Khaleesi on ‘Game of Thrones’—And Bombing

Before she was Wanda Maximoff,  Elizabeth Olsen was just another young actor, albeit one with a famous family, looking for her big break. And Game of Thrones was…not it. Apparently the Scarlet Witch auditioned for the role of Daenerys Targaryen, and she says she pretty much blew it.

“I auditioned for, like, the assistant to the casting director in a small room in New York with just a camera on me and them reading the script,” she told The Hollywood Reporter about the casting process for the hit HBO series. “I was doing the Khaleesi speech when she comes out of the fire. It was awful. I didn’t get a callback.”

GoT fans will recognize that moment from the end of season one: Dany and her dragon eggs have just been burned alive, but she emerges unscathed from the smoking rubble with the last three dragons in Westeros on her shoulders.

Olsen didn’t say what about her audition went so badly, but she did tell Vulture in 2019 that she had to try the speech with both a British and her natural American accent: “She’s making this speech to thousands of people about how she’s their queen…. They didn’t know if they wanted a British accent or not. So, you did it in both. It was terrible. Anytime someone says, ‘Bad audition story.’ That’s one I remember.”

She shouldn’t feel too bad about it, though. If Olsen had been cast, she probably wouldn’t have been able to take on the role of Wanda in WandaVision (and the other Marvel movies but, whatever; if it’s not about Paul Bettany, we’re not entirely sure we care). So maybe the lesson here is that things tend to work out for the best. And if Elizabeth Olsen really wants a part in the GoT universe, maybe she can cameo in one of the upcoming prequel series?