“It was definitely like, ‘Okay, Emilia, think about this. Are we ready to dive back into this?’ But the script was undeniable,” she says, calling out the creative team behind the show in particular: creators David Iserson and Susanna Fogel, as well as executive producer Jessica [Rhoades]. “I loved them. I loved them from the first moment [we met].”

“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 says.

She and Richardson, 30, clicked immediately when they met over Zoom. “It’s just been easy-peasy from day one,” Clarke tells PEOPLE.

Both actresses are aware of how special their bond is. “Even when you love someone you’re working with, it’s very rare that, after the job is done and the bubble’s popped, that you’re friends,” Richardson told ENTERT. “It’s rare.”

Clarke spent a decade starring on Game of Thrones as Daenerys Targaryen, and since the hugely successful series came to an end in 2019, she’s been candid about how difficult it’s been to process the phenomenon the show became.

“The more distance I have from Game of Thrones, the more I can quantify it,” she told ENTERT 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.”

“I was just incredibly, incredibly lucky to have had that experience,” she says of starring in the series based on George R. R. Martin’s bestselling books.

It was “lightning in a bottle,” and she said it “means the world” that fans remain so dedicated to it.