Emilia Clarke, Mother of Dragons, Dasher of Rumors. The Game of Thrones actor has just come out very plainly to say she will not be returning as Sarah Connor in Paramount's Terminator franchise. We don't blame her.
Speaking with ComingSoon.net:
“No,” Clarke put it succinctly when we asked if she might again play Sarah Connor in future Terminator sequels. “Can I say that? It”s okay. No. Uh-uh. But I have some very different roles coming up.”
I'm a huge fan of the Terminator films, I even have a “No Fate” tattoo. So it might be safe to say I'd go easy on a sequel/reboot of the series which also included Clarke, Doctor Who's Matt Smith, and of course Arnold Schwarzenegger. I'll even ignore the fact the cast included Jason Clarke and Jai Courtney, two actors who are so barely visible on screen they might as well be specters.
And I did go easy on it. I liked it even though it was rife with issues, not the least of which was its own marketing. You may recall they gave away one of the biggest surprises of the entire film in one of the trailers (something the director was not thrilled with).
So it's no surprise that even if Paramount decides to produce another film in the series (they've previously pulled a sequel for Genisys off their slate), Clarke won't be along for the ride.
The film had serious plot and story issues but Clarke was always going to be compared to her predecessors in the role – her Thrones co-star Lena Headey who played Connor in TV's Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and of course the one and only Linda Hamilton. She wasn't a bad Sarah Connor but she also didn't stand out and that's not good when the film is specifically focused on a Sarah who got to train at an even younger age. And, you know, while they can't stop talking about John Connor for two seconds, the franchise as a whole has always been held up by it's main, badass female character and her journey.
Clarke's next role is an adaptation of Me Before You which boasts tons of other genre actors. She told ComingSoon, “I read the book and it was just the most beautiful thing I had ever read. I was shooting Terminator at the time and had a rocket launcher in my hand while crying like a little girl. I felt like the author, Jojo Moyes, had found a part of me and just wrote it down. I knew that I just had to play the role.”