Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke is adding another series to her schedule.
The multiple Emmy nominee will star in Ponies, a spy thriller that has landed a straight-to-series order at Peacock. The Cold War-era show comes from Universal Television and co-creators Susanna Fogel (Booksmart, The Flight Attendant) and David Iserson (Mr. Robot).
Clarke is currently filming another streaming series, Criminal, for Amazon’s Prime Video. She stars opposite Charlie Hunnam, Richard Jenkins, John Hawkes and Adria Arjona (among others) in that drama, based on the graphic novel by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips.
Ponies is set in Moscow in 1977. It centers on two “PONIES”(persons of no interest) who work anonymously as secretaries at the American embassy — until their husbands are killed under mysterious circumstances in the USSR and they become CIA operatives. Clarke will play Bea, an overeducated, Russian-speaking child of Soviet immigrants. The other lead character, Twila (who has yet to be cast), is a small-town girl who’s both abrasive and fearless. The pair work together to uncover a conspiracy and unearth what made them widows.
Fogel and Iserson are co-writing the series, with Fogel also directing and Iserson serving as showrunner. They executive produce with Jessica Rhoades (Station Eleven, Sharp Objects) via her Pacesetter Productions, and Clarke; Katherine Bridle and Pacesetter’s Alison Mo Massey are co-EPs.
Clarke’s recent credits include the Marvel series Secret Invasion for Disney+ and Sundance award winner The Pod Generation. She made her West End stage debut in 2022 in a production of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull.