- - Emilia Clarke Is 'Not Ready' to Think About Turning 40 This Year (Exclusive)

Julia Moore, Brenton BlanchetJanuary 28, 2026 at 10:00 AM

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Emilia Clarke attends Peacock's "Ponies" New York premiere at The Whitby Hotel on January 14, 2026 in New York City

Dia Dipasupil/Getty

Emilia Clarke turns 40 later this year, but it's not a birthday she's ready to think about yet

Clarke, who stars in Peacock's new spy thriller PONIES, tells PEOPLE she's planning to instead ride out the wave of being 39 "for the next couple of years, at least"

PONIES is now streaming on Peacock

Emilia Clarke has a big birthday coming up.

The actress will turn 40 in October, but that's not a topic she wants to talk about quite yet. "Would you just not acknowledge that? I'm not ready," Clarke, 39, tells PEOPLE when asked about her upcoming birthday. "I am not ready."

Instead, she's planning to continue milking being 39 "for the next couple of years, at least." As she says, "I've got a good decade left in me [of being] 39."

She adds that 40 is an age she's just "not ready" for. "I don't want to acknowledge that that is a number," says the Game of Thrones alum. "I'm sure I'll be fine — it'll be fine. I'm going to be great."

Haley Lu Richardson (left) and Emilia Clarke attend Peacock's "Ponies" New York premiere at The Whitby Hotel on January 14, 2026

Dia Dipasupil/Getty

In the meantime, the English actress is celebrating the release of her newest project, Peacock's PONIES, which sees her and Haley Lu Richardson as two widows who convince the CIA to let them be operatives in Soviet Union-era Moscow after their husbands are mysteriously killed.

The series marks Clarke's first lead TV role since Game of Thrones ended in 2019, and she told PEOPLE why PONIES was the perfect way for her to return to the small screen.

"It was definitely like, 'Okay, Emilia, think about this. Are we ready to dive back into this?' But the script was undeniable," she said at the New York City premiere on Jan. 14. "And then getting to build the cast out and having Haley be my sister and my partner in crime, yeah, this was meant to be."

Clarke celebrated her most recent milestone birthday on the set of Game of Thrones. She turned 30 in 2016, and marked the on-set birthday with a funny Instagram photo featuring two unlikely companions: SpongeBob and Dora the Explorer.

In the photo, Clarke was dressed in costume as Daenerys Targaryen with a blanket over her shoulders and joked that the photo contained "spoilers" for the hit HBO series. She also wrote in the caption that "Jon Snow's mum" was featured in the shot, which included her "brand new thirty-year-old" self.

"#vivalagameofthronesbirthdays 🎉🍻🏆🙌," Clarke added to the post.

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Emilia Clarke (left) and Haley Lu Richardson (right) in 'PONIES'

Peacock

In the seven years since her time as a Targaryen came to an end, Clarke has been candid about how challenging it can be to fully process the "lightning in a bottle" experience that Game of Thrones was.

"The more distance I have from Game of Thrones, the more I can quantify it," she told PEOPLE in 2024. "When I started, you don't know what you're doing, you don't know what you're surrounded by and you don't know what you're taking part in."

"Now, as more and more time goes between it and me doing it, the more I'm like — that was incredibly special and that was incredibly rare," she said. "I was just incredibly, incredibly lucky to have had that experience."

PONIES can be streamed in full on Peacock.

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