Emilia Clarke promises virtual dinner date in exchange for COVID-19 donation

PTI, Mar 31, 2020, 1:28 PM IST

London: “Game of Thrones” star Emilia Clarke has offered a dinner date to people donating money to SameYou, her charity that supports those recovering from brain injuries and strokes, in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

The new initiative by the foundation aims to help the National Health Service, the publicly funded healthcare system of the UK, free up beds for coronavirus patients by helping people recover from brain injuries at home.

In a video shared on Instagram on Monday, Clarke said 12 donors will be randomly selected from around the world for a virtual dinner with her.

“We’ll cook it together and eat it together. And we will discuss lots of things isolation and fear and also funny videos. And, you know, the fact that I can’t really cook. So it’s going to be fun,” the 33-year-old said in the clip.

Clarke has set the donation amount to 250,000 pounds. The drive is in partnership with the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Massachusetts and the University College London Hospital.

“We are creating a virtual rehabilitation clinic so brain injury survivors have somewhere to go and somewhere to feel safe and somewhere to not feel so alone and isolated, which I think is a good thing. We need to do all we can to release as many beds as possible to free up our hardworking NHS,” Clarke said.

The actor founded SameYou after revealing that she had suffered from two brain aneurysms in the early days of “Game of Thrones”.

Over the weekend, “X-Men” star James McAvoy donated 275,000 pounds to the NHS to combat the coronavirus pandemic.