Emilia Clarke Says She's “Missing” Parts of Her Brain After Aneurysms
Towards the end of her time as Daenerys Targaryen on Game of Thrones, actor Emilia Clarke opened up about having had two brain aneurysms early on in the show’s run. It got to where she wasn’t sure if she was going to be able to continue acting—at one point she was suffering from aphasia and couldn’t remember her own name. But she pulled through and finished the series, and has a vibrant career today.
The experience inspired Clarke to create the SameYou charity, which helps people with stroke and brain injury. She talked more about her journey recently on BBC One’s Sunday Morning.
“The amount of my brain that is no longer usable—it’s remarkable that I am able to speak, sometimes articulately, and live my life completely normally with absolutely no repercussions,” she said. “I am in the really, really, really small minority of people that can survive that.”
Clarke, who always seems like she’s in good spirits during interviews, is now able to find humor in her ordeal. She noted that when she has brain scans, quite a bit of her brain is “missing.” That “always makes me laugh.”
“As soon as any part of your brain doesn’t get blood for a second, it’s gone,” Clarke continued. "And so the blood finds a different route to get around but then whatever bit it’s missing is therefore gone.”
Clarke is currently starring in a production of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London. She’ll also appear in the upcoming Marvel series Secret Invasion on Disney+.
[h/t Independent]
The 20 Best-Selling Video Game Consoles of All Time
The gaming industry has come a long way since the Atari era. Today's consoles can turn on your TV and connect to your smartphone in addition to hosting games. Newer video game consoles may be more versatile, but they haven't caught up with the classic models in terms of sales. To see which consoles have sold the most units, check out the list below.
According to Visual Capitalist, the best-selling video game console of all time debuted in 2000. Sony's PlayStation revolutionized the gaming world when it hit shelves at the turn of the millennium. In addition to running cutting-edge graphics (at least for the time), the device played DVDs, making its original price of $299 easier to swallow. Though it was taken off the market in 2013, the device still dominates sales records with 157.68 millions units sold overall.
Most of the products on the list are from previous console generations. The second and third best-selling consoles are the Nintendo DS and Game Boy, which launched in 2004 and 1989, respectively. Next in the ranking are the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch—the only actively sold models to break the top 20.
For every Game Boy and PlayStation, the world's major video game brands have produced plenty of flops. You won't find Nintendo's Virtual Boy or Power Glove on any best-seller lists. After reading the ranking below, you can learn more about the Japanese gaming company here.
- PlayStation 2
- Nintendo DS
- Game Boy
- PlayStation 4
- Nintendo Switch
- PlayStation
- Nintendo Wii
- PlayStation 3
- Xbox 360
- PlayStation Portable
- Game Boy Advance
- Nintendo 3DS
- NES
- Xbox One
- SNES
- Sega Genesis
- Nintendo 64
- Atari 2600
- GameCube
- Xbox
13 Job Secrets of Celebrity Publicists
Being a talented artist is just one part of making it big in Hollywood: Today’s A-listers also have to take the right projects, be seen with the right people, and say the right things when a microphone is in their face. And to keep this area of their career running smoothly, most stars turn to publicists for help.
Publicists are the invisible forces who help turn charming celebrities into blockbuster brands. A publicist’s work exposes them to aspects of the industry that most of us rarely see—from secret scandals to racism on the red carpet—but their expertise is invaluable in the world of entertainment. Here’s what several celebrity publicists had to say about the work they do behind the scenes.
1. Publicists come from various backgrounds.
Some colleges do offer degrees in public relations, but they’re not required to land a job in the field. Annie Jeeves, the head publicist and founder of Cinematic Red PR, went to school for communications and says many of her colleagues took different avenues into the profession. “They didn’t study it. They just fell into it,” Jeeves tells Mental Floss. “They came from an acting background, or a writing background, a you-name-it background. Very few people, at least of my generation, actually studied it in school.”
Geoff Harris, who is going by a pseudonym for this article, works for a private entertainment PR firm today, and his entry into the publicity world came from a part-time job during his college years. “My side job was working at United Artists theaters, and I worked at the Criterion [movie theater in New York] specifically,” he tells Mental Floss. “We used to run all kinds of screenings, and I met one of the field publicists for one of the big studios [...] and eventually he was like, ‘Hey, well you know our offices are looking for a clerk.’ This was in the publicity department of one of the major studios, and it was like a really cool position to start at—start at the bottom and work your way up.”
2. PR disasters are unavoidable …
Every professional we spoke with has had to deal with a publicity disaster at some point in their career. Laura Greene, who is also going by a pseudonym for this article, is the president and founder of her own PR firm, and she’s seen most of the headline-making scandals you can imagine. “You name it, I’ve had to deal with it,” she tells Mental Floss. “Anything from DUIs, going to jail, cheating on a spouse, violent behavior that needed to go away. The list goes on.”
Jeeves recalls a holiday weekend being interrupted by a breaking news story involving one of her clients. “I turned on my TV to footage from CNN—without going into any of the details of it—that almost instantaneously I identified as the film I was working on that I was not on set for,” she says. “No one ever escapes crisis [...] It always makes you slightly vomitous—if you had any appetite that day, congratulations, it’s now gone.”
3. … But publicists know how to handle them.
One popular protocol publicists use for dealing with disasters is to limit communications and keep their clients quiet.
Jeeves says that when she saw that project she was working for on the news, “my phone began to ring [...] That was the first time I had to have my phone shut down, which means they send everyone to voicemail or to email. No one gets to talk to you who isn’t the client or the client’s lawyers or producers in that space.”
Harris tells his clients to follow this approach in worst-case scenarios. “My advice has always been to shut down, don’t say anything else,” he says. “Consult with your team, and consult before you post anything, moving forward.”
4. Publicists have to fight harder for their BIPOC clients.
When working with clients from underrepresented backgrounds, publicists witness Hollywood’s racism firsthand. “What nobody told me was that if I had a client who was Black or Brown, or just some other race besides white, I was typically going to have to be prepared to fight and advocate for them twice as hard as my other clients,” Joy Donnell, a former entertainment publicist, tells Mental Floss.
This wasn’t just the case when finding opportunities for her clients—even after one of her clients worked on a major film, Donnell still had trouble securing her the recognition she deserved. “I was taking a client, who happens to be a Black woman, and she was in an Oscar-nominated movie, and we are literally on the red carpet for an event. And before we get onto the carpet, a white-bodied woman, who I did not know [...] steps onto the carpet. And everybody in the press corps starts taking photos of her,” she recalls. “I literally heard the photographers talking to each other saying, ‘Do you know who that was? Who was that?’ So then I step onto the carpet with my client, who is dressed beautifully, and basically everyone was just looking at us. It was this horrifying moment where I realized they were not trying to pick up their cameras to take a picture of her because she was not one of the three Black women that they considered to be important.”
Luckily, Donnell was able to turn the situation around. She communicated nonverbally to her allies in the press, who recognized what was happening and hyped up the actress with the other photographers. Though a disaster was averted, the story highlights how even the most successful Black women have to deal with racism in show business.
“I found out once I got inside the party that the white woman that everybody was taking pictures of, she was not even an actress,” Donnell says. “She was a guest of a guest, and everybody got excited about her because of how she looked race-wise [...] So you’re playing this whole other level of strategy and mental gymnastics on the carpet, and no one really prepared me for that.”
5. BIPOC publicists have to fight for themselves as well.
In addition to advocating for her BIPOC clients, Donnell also had to fight for herself as a Black woman in a white-dominated industry. “I would end up in a lot of situations where I was getting this weirdness back,”
she says, recalling meetings where a manager would ask her “if I could represent people who are not Black; if I have the talent or the ability to do that.”
Following her experiences in publicity, Donnell co-founded the Center for Intersectional Media + Entertainment, or CIME, an organization dedicated to the advancement of intersectional representation in film and television. “It’s about representation," she says, describing the project, “and looking at the stories that we inherited, things that never got course-corrected, and how we can go about creating more restorative narratives.”
6. The job is less glamorous than it looks.
Though their job takes them to film festivals, award shows, and Hollywood parties, publicists don’t feel like the celebrities they’re paid to represent. “I joke that we’re an overdressed valet waiting for the car,” Jeeves says.
Their feelings about their work rarely align with other people’s perceptions—even those closest to them. “All of my friends think what I do is so glamorous and so much fun, like they can’t understand why I’m happy when I don’t have to go to the Cannes Film Festival,” Greene explains. “I love it for work, but it’s not something I want to do when I’m not working [because] it’s work.”
According to Harris, if people could see the work that takes place off the red carpet, these misconceptions would be less common: “I’ve waited in millions of curbside dark alleys, waiting for clients to get out of limos, and run to get special requests in rain. There’s a lot of unflattering things I’ve had to do throughout the years.”
7. They are not prone to gossip.
You may assume that having a friend in entertainment PR gives you access to the hottest Hollywood gossip—but that isn’t the case. When a publicist hears a sensitive piece of information, they know to push it out of their mind. “At a certain point in my career, you would overhear things, or something might be kind of peripheral to a client,” Jeeves says. “And obviously if it was something you wanted to make sure didn’t get leaked out, you knew to forget what you needed to forget. So when things would break a couple of months later, at that point my brain would be like, ‘Oh right, I remember that’ [...] You just got very good at learning to do that and having a poker face because you certainly don’t want to ever create a situation for anyone, for yourself or a fellow industry mate.”
8. Celebrities can be their own worst enemies.
A publicist's guidance is only valuable when their client takes it, and according to Greene, it’s not always easy to convince them to listen. “You really have to be on the same page as the client,” she says. “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t force it to drink. You can give all the best advice in the world, but the client also has to be willing to take it and do it. And most of my clients in my past have, but some of them don’t. They don’t necessarily do what’s good for them or the overall benefit to their career.”
To an A-lister who’s only been told what they want to hear, receiving the harsh truth from their publicist can be jarring. According to Harris, these uncomfortable conversations are unavoidable. “There are [clients] that have to sort of be prodded and told like, ‘Hey man, listen, I don’t know if this is the correct way.’ And a lot of people are afraid to speak up. Some people want to be surrounded by yes men, but I think you got to be truthful and honest and keep it real, and if your client is out of line you got to let them know, because you’re going to go farther down the rabbit hole if you don’t.”
9. Flexibility is a job requirement.
If you live by plans and schedules, entertainment publicity isn’t the right field for you. “You can’t predict when a client gets pulled over and is drinking and driving; you can’t predict when a client needs you,” Greene says. “When they want you and they’re paying for you, you have to be there. You can’t offer a service and make somebody pay for it and not deliver that service [...] It’s not a nine-to-fiver.”
Donnell agrees that being a publicist requires spontaneity. This skill is just as vital when seizing an opportunity as it is when responding to a crisis. “I’ve found that you can only have about 75 percent of a strategy and the other 25 percent had to just be kismet,” she says. “[It] could never be a rigid plan; you always [have] to keep it very fluid, and be ready to roll with what comes along sometimes—and that doesn’t even have to be a crisis situation. That could be something spectacular that you never knew was going to be an option when you went about putting the plan together.”
10. The internet makes their job easier in some ways …
While the digital transition was difficult for some veteran publicists, others welcomed the change. It’s much easier to secure a 4000-word feature on a website than in a magazine with limited page space, after all. And for Greene, even something as simple as email has made her job less strenuous. “Thank god I’m not licking and sticking stamps to send out old-fashioned press kits. Or coming out of Xerox machines and spending a fortune on messengers,” she says. “I love all the changes and I embrace the changes and I think it’s great.”
11. … And harder in others.
The internet also gives celebrities direct access to their fans and vice-versa. From a publicist’s perspective, this isn’t always a good thing. “I have dealt with helping out clients who have been derailed and said the wrong things on social media that were inappropriate [...] Since the internet came on, that’s been a big challenge for I’m sure tons of publicists,” Harris says.
12. Fake Hollywood relationships aren’t as common as they once were.
A modern publicist’s duties don’t typically include manufacturing relationships for their famous clients, though this isn’t unheard of. According to Greene, fake celebrity couples were more common during Hollywood’s Golden Age. “I think it’s a little more old Hollywood than it is new Hollywood,” she says. “There has to be a certain level of authenticity with what you’re going to suggest to do with your client or it doesn’t work. [...] [It’s] not like those olden days where you’re Cary Grant and you’re dating some female movie star to prove you were in a relationship when you clearly weren’t.”
13. Publicists look out for each other.
Hollywood has a reputation as a cutthroat industry, but at least on the publicity side of show business, that typically isn’t accurate. According to Jeeves, publicists are quick to offer their peers guidance—or a sympathetic ear. When her phone lit up the day her client was in a crisis, many of those calls were from colleagues checking in on her.
“A lot of people who were my seniors, who were veteran publicists when I was dealing with that particular instance, they would stop and poke their head in,” she says. “My fellow publicists, we are an incredible community for one another. And I don’t think people realize that. Yes, there is competition [...] but I don’t think we look at each other that way. We look at each other as colleagues, and if we need to lean in and ask questions and get guidance, we know that we can.”
Watch the First Behind-the-Scenes Featurette for HBO's 'House of the Dragon'
The long-awaited Game of Thrones prequel series, House of the Dragon, draws ever closer. With around a month to go before its late-August premiere date, HBO has just released the show's first behind-the-scenes featurette, giving fans a more intimate look at the production of this ambitious series.
In this teaser, you'll see shots of dragons flying over King’s Landing, a look at the black skull of Balerion the Black Dread, and plenty of hints of the battles to come. Check it out below:
In addition to all the great new footage and teases, the featurette also includes plenty of face time with House of the Dragon’s two showrunners, Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik.
“I feel incredibly loyal and responsible to the original show. I have a great kind of desire to even be in the same room as [Game of Thrones], because it was a game changer,” said Sapochnik, who directed several of the best episodes of the original show. “The idea of going back to Westeros was almost too much of a challenge. You have to start by respecting it. You can’t start by doing different for different’s sake … It really was seeing it through a different perspective that interested me.”
Sapochnik and Condal share a vision of honoring the original series and the work of George R.R. Martin while still forging ahead. “[Miguel] saw some of the things that I saw, and it wasn’t just a prequel for prequel’s sake,” said Condal, who handles most of the writing duties while Sapochnik focuses on the directing. “There was actually a reason to tell the story.”
While Sapochnik directed great Game of Thrones episodes like “Hardhome,” “Battle of the Bastards,” and “The Winds of Winter,” Condal came personally recommended by Martin. “George and his writing was a huge influence on me,” Condal explained. “It’s an incredible feeling to achieve my dream job. You get that great call which is the thing that every writer is hoping for, telling you ‘We’re gonna go make this thing.’ And you’re happy for a few seconds … and then you realize the responsibility that’s on your shoulders.”
Among those feeling the pressure is Martin himself, who wrote the book that House of the Dragon is based on, Fire & Blood. “I’m excited,” the author said. “It’s always a little apprehensive when you turn your baby over to foster parents, but I’m involved in this. It’s great to have Ryan, who’s a great writer and someone who really knew my world. He’s gonna do his best to remain faithful to it. I knew Miguel Sapochnik was an amazing director. He’d won an Emmy, he’d done some of our best episodes.”
House of the Dragon premieres August 21 on HBO and HBO Max.
How Aerosmith and Run-DMC's "Walk This Way" Forever Altered the Landscape of American Music
In the 1980s, the televised destruction of two walls forever changed the course of human events. One was the Berlin Wall, which came down on November 9, 1989, signaling the end of the Cold War. The other was the wall separating Aerosmith from Run-DMC in the music video for the latter’s 1986 cover of the former’s “Walk This Way.”
When Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler busted through that wall with his microphone stand, putting the two groups suddenly face-to-face, it sent a powerful message about rock and hip-hop being equally valid genres that didn’t have to exist separately. The symbolism was as blatant as it was effective.
Thanks in part to that video, Run-DMC’s “Walk This Way” (which featured Tyler and his guitar hero bandmate Joe Perry) exploded in the summer of ’86. The single peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100—a full six places higher than Aerosmith’s 1975 original—and became the first rap song to crack the Top 10. For the first time ever, mainstream rock and pop radio were playing hip-hop, a still largely underground genre that would ultimately come to dominate American music and conquer the globe.
In his 2019 book Walk This Way: Run-DMC, Aerosmith, and the Song That Changed American Music Forever, author Geoff Edgers argues that the song had an even broader impact on American culture. Edgers traces the song’s success to a number of subsequent events, including the creation of Yo! MTV Raps, Public Enemy’s collaboration with the metal band Anthrax, Fox’s launch of the Black-centric sketch comedy show In Living Color, and even the election of Barack Obama.
“Is it a stretch to say those things are all connected to ‘Walk this Way’ and Run-DMC?” Edgers asked on the Sound Opinions podcast. “Well, I don’t know. It’s a stretch maybe to talk about President Obama being directly connected to that, but all of those other things I mentioned didn’t exist until this moment in time when hip-hop became part of our mainstream culture.”
Who’s the Real “King of Rock”?
When Aerosmith and Run-DMC entered Magic Venture Studios in New York City on March 9, 1986, for their historic collaboration, the two groups were in very different places. Run-DMC were ascendent: Their first two albums, 1984’s Run-DMC and 1985’s King of Rock, had sold well, and the trio from the Hollis neighborhood of Queens, New York, were the biggest hip-hop act on the planet. They were on the verge of taking the genre to places it had never gone before.
Aerosmith, on the other hand, were largely seen as over-the-hill has-beens far removed from their ’70s-era glory days. Perry, the lead guitarist, quit in 1979, leaving the band to muddle through the first half of the ’80s without a major hit. Although Perry returned for 1985’s Done With Mirrors, the album was a total flop. To make matters worse, Tyler and Perry were both battling drug addictions. Things didn’t look good for the so-called “bad boys from Boston.”
In other words, Aerosmith needed Run-DMC much more than Run-DMC needed Aerosmith. That fact has been lost to the ages, as many fans assume Tyler and Perry were somehow doing Run-DMC a favor when they agreed to the team up. Edgers has said that one of his goals in writing the book Walk This Way was to set the record straight about the nature of the partnership. Aerosmith had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
A Hard Breakbeat
Several people have taken credit for the idea of pairing Run-DMC with Aerosmith, but it’s generally acknowledged that producer Rick Rubin, the legendary co-founder of Def Jam Records, was the man with the masterplan. Rubin had been hired to produce Run-DMC’s third album, Raising Hell, and he wanted a single that would break the trio in Middle America. Rubin had grown up worshiping Aerosmith, so he decided Run-DMC should cover “Walk This Way.”
In one sense, this wasn’t that bizarre a request. For starters, Run-DMC had rapped over electric guitars on their singles “Rock Box” and “King of Rock.” More importantly, “Walk This Way” was a popular record among New York City hip-hop DJs—though the turntablists would only play the first four seconds, the part where Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer lays down a flat, funky beat. The DJs weren’t interested in Perry’s guitar riff, and they certainly didn’t want to hear Tyler’s horndog vocals. It was all about that snippet of drums, looped over and over again.
Run-DMC’s in-house turntable maestro Jam Master Jay would often spin “Walk This Way.” The group’s two rapping members, Joseph “Run” Simmons and Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, simply knew the song as track four on Toys in the Attic, Aerosmith’s 1975 blockbuster. “We had no idea that there was singing or what the song was, but we knew the beat,” McDaniels told Edgers for a piece in The Washington Post. “It was a hard breakbeat.”
Rubin instructed Run and DMC to go home with Toys In the Attic and transcribe the lyrics to “Walk This Way.” The MCs did as they were told and quickly decided there was no way they were going to rap Tyler’s corny lines about a young dude’s sexual exploits. In an interview with Loudwire, DMC recalled telling Rubin, “This is country-bumpkin, mountain-climbing hillbilly gibberish.” But Rubin and Jam Master Jay convinced the rappers to give it a shot.
“Glitter Meets Gold”
Rubin’s next brilliant move was getting Aerosmith (or at least Perry and Tyler) to appear on the track. For a fee of $8000, the rockers turned up one fateful Sunday in March 1986 to add new vocals and guitar. The members of Run-DMC were less than awestruck to be in the presence of the arena rockers. In fact, they might not have known who Tyler and Perry were. “We were like, ‘Rick went and got the Rolling Stones,’” DMC told Loudwire.
According to Edgers, who was given exclusive access to never-before-seen MTV footage shot the day of the recording session, Run-DMC and Aerosmith didn’t really jibe in the studio. Neither group was familiar with the other’s work, and Tyler and Perry were a little miffed about Run and DMC changing some of the lyrics. But they got over it, and Perry wound up tracking not just guitar, but also bass. He didn’t bring a bass with him, but fortunately, there were three “kids” (Perry's word) hanging out in the studio, one of whom volunteered to run home and get his bass. As it turns out, those “kids” were the Beastie Boys.
Due to their misgivings about Tyler’s lyrics, Run and DMC goofed around on their initial vocal takes and failed to capture the right energy. At the urging of Jam Master Jay, they returned to the studio to re-do their raps, and this time, they nailed it. Nevertheless, McDaniels recalls telling the label, “You better not put this out as a single.”
“Walk This Way” arrived in July 1986 as the second single off Raising Hell. Because Tyler and Perry were featured on the track, Boston’s tastemaking rock station WBCN decided to play the thing. That caused other rap-averse stations around the country to follow suit. The song also caught fire on MTV, which put the video in heavy rotation.
Director Jon Small came up with the video’s ingenious concept after listening to the song a few times. As the clip opens, Aerosmith and Run-DMC are situated in adjacent rooms, annoying each other with their loud music. When Run-DMC start rhyming over “Walk This Way,” Tyler busts through the wall with his mic stand to see what’s going on. Next thing you know, both acts are onstage together, rocking a theater full of screaming fans.
“I loved the video’s metaphor—that the wall between rock and rap was coming down and that the two music styles actually worked well together,” Perry told The Wall Street Journal. “It was glitter meets gold. Everyone who watched MTV then—rock and rap fans—got the message.”
The Aftermath
“Walk This Way” would prove Run-DMC’s only Top 5 pop hit, and it propelled Raising Hell to a career-best No. 3 on the Billboard 200. Raising Hell also became the first-ever platinum-selling rap album. Run-DMC returned in 1988 with Tougher Than Leather, a less successful album that yielded the minor hits “Run’s House” and “Mary, Mary.” While the group’s commercial fortunes dwindled in the decade that followed, Run-DMC were recognized as elder statesmen who’d made essential contributions to the rise of hip-hop. In 2009, they became the second-ever hip-hop act inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, after Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
Aerosmith ended up getting a much bigger boost from “Walk This Way.” Their next album, 1987’s Permanent Vacation, spawned three Top 20 pop hits: “Dude (Looks Like a Lady),” “Angel,” and “Rag Doll.” With Tyler and Perry newly sober, the band cruised into the ’90s with renewed vigor and cultural cachet. More hits followed, and in 1999 the band went all the way to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with the Diane Warren-penned power ballad “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing,” from the big-budget asteroid flick Armageddon. In 2001, Aerosmith were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
In the ’90s, echoes of “Walk This Way” could be heard in the new generation of artists merging rap and rock. Rage Against the Machine drew on the more socially conscious strains of both traditions to create ferocious songs about global injustice. Angsty nu metal acts such as Korn and Limp Bizkit riled up suburbia with their doofy anthems. Alt-rockers ranging from Beck to Sugar Ray utilized turntables. And then there was Kid Rock, who joined Run-DMC and Tyler and Perry to perform “Walk This Way” as part of a medley at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards.
A couple years later, Aerosmith co-headlined the Super Bowl XXXV halftime show with NSYNC. The performers closed the show with “Walk This Way,” featuring help from Britney Spears, Mary J. Blige, and Nelly. Two decades later, at the 2020 Grammy Awards, Tyler and Perry again joined forces with Run-DMC (minus Jam Master Day, who was murdered in 2001) to give “Walk This Way” another public airing. This time around, Run-DMC busted through the wall—a fitting reversal, as hip-hop had long since replaced rock as America’s top genre.
In the eyes of DMC, there’s a moral to the story of “Walk This Way,” and he shares it with young people when he does speaking engagements at high schools. “Always be open to try something new, because it might not just change your life,” DMC told Loudwire. “It might change the world.”