Overview
- Clarke, speaking on Elizabeth Day’s How to Fail on Wednesday, offered her most detailed retelling of the brain aneurysms she survived in 2011 and 2013.
- She said the first hemorrhage hit during a plank at the gym, and she and her agent waited two weeks to tell HBO until doctors were sure she would live.
- She recalled doctors saying the second aneurysm had tripled in size, that an initial procedure failed, and that surgeons then opened her skull for a follow-up operation.
- Clarke described shutting down emotionally after the surgeries and said even routine headaches still trigger fear because the injury is invisible to others.
- She later revealed the ordeal in a 2019 New Yorker essay, told the BBC in 2022 that quite a bit of her brain is missing, and now advocates for recovery through her SameYou charity.