Emilia Clarke to Star in Period Drama 'PONIES'

A particular type of curse in Hollywood can happen to young actors who get cast in a hit series right out of school, especially if that role lasts longer than three seasons: an inability to find another role when the project is done. This has been the case with several actors from the Game of Thrones series, which was an iconic smash hit by the end of the first season and ran for a decade. Nearly all the young/child actors who landed those early roles have struggled to move on or found themselves in a string of flops; Sophie Turner and Maisie Williams found themselves dead-ended in films that were Fox's final failed gasp at keeping the X-Men from returning to Disney, Kit Harington was in Marvel's closest thing to a big-screen bomb in Eternals, Emilia Clarke was in Star Wars and Marvel critical disasters Solo: A Star Wars Story and Secret Invasion, respectively, and Arnold Schwartzengger's failed attempt to revive The Terminator.

However, five years after the disastrous ending of Game of Thrones, all four are refinding their feet. Turner is divorcing her Jonas Brother and will star in Joan this fall; Harington is currently absolutely rocking Industry's third (and probably final) season; and Williams was critically lauded for her turn as Catherine Dior in The New Look. Now, Clarke is also stepping up to take charge of her career. 

Instead of just accepting wooden second-tier blockbuster roles in franchises Hollywood tells her she "should" be taking, she's creating projects of her own to star in via her production company. Her first, the sci-fi dystopia The Pod Generation, debuted at Sundance in 2023. Her newest is PONIES, a 1970s-era period drama in which a pair of Russian women become spies for the CIA after the authoritarian regime of the USSR murders their husbands.

Here’s the series logline:

Set in Moscow in 1977, the series follows two “PONIES” (“Persons Of No Interest” in intelligence speak) who work anonymously as secretaries in the American Embassy. That is until their husbands are killed under mysterious circumstances in the USSR, and the pair become CIA operatives. Bea is an over-educated, Russian-speaking child of Soviet immigrants. Her cohort, Twila, is a small-town girl who is as abrasive as she is fearless. Together, they work to uncover a vast Cold War conspiracy and solve the mystery that made them widows in the first place.

Peacock gave the series a conditional greenlight as long as it had an A-list star attached, which Clarke accepted, sending PONIES into the "straight to series" order pile. She’ll play Bea. The role of Twila has not been cast yet, nor have any of the other roles. Those are expected to be announced in due course when filming commences.

Clarke teams up with Susanna Fogel (The Flight Attendant) and David Iserson (Mr. Robot) for this forthcoming series; Fogel and Iserson co-created the series and are co-writing all scripts, with Fogel directing all installments. All three are executive producers along with Jessica Rhoades via her Pacesetter Productions, with the company’s EVP Alison Mo Massey serving as co-executive producer alongside Katherine Bridle.

PONIES does not yet have a production start date but will likely film in early 2025 and arrive on Peacock in 2026.