It sounds like the setup to a tabloid scandal, but the reality is far more wholesome and a lot funnier. In January 2018, Brad Pitt bid $120,000 at a charity auction for the chance to spend an evening with Emilia Clarke. Not a romantic date, not a candlelit dinner at some Malibu restaurant. He wanted to watch an episode of Game of Thrones with her.
And he lost.
The whole thing went down at one of Hollywood’s most star-studded charity events, and it has since become one of those celebrity anecdotes that refuses to die. Clarke has told the story multiple times over the years, always with a mixture of disbelief and delight, and the details are worth examining because they say something about fame, charity, and what happens when two of Hollywood’s biggest names end up on opposite sides of an auction paddle.
The Biggest Names in Hollywood, All in One Room
The setting was Sean Penn’s 8th annual gala for the J/P Haitian Relief Organization. A charity Penn founded after the devastating 2010 earthquake that killed an estimated 250,000 people and affected 3 million more.
By 2018, the event had become one of the most reliable draws on the Hollywood philanthropy calendar, attracting the kind of guest list that made other charity events look modest by comparison. Tickets cost $5,000 per plate. Which meant the room was filled with people who could afford to spend that much on dinner and still have plenty left over for the auction.
Leonardo DiCaprio was being honored that night for 20 years of environmental advocacy through his namesake foundation. Penn called him “a great inspiration” during the ceremony, and DiCaprio returned the compliment by calling Penn an inspiration and role model. “I know we’re both hesitant to talk publicly about the work we do behind the scenes,” DiCaprio said during his speech. “But the truth is, in my private life there is no one that I reference more than you as an inspiration for me.” The mutual admiration was genuine, and it set the tone for an evening that would raise nearly $4 million for relief efforts in Haiti.
Brad Pitt, Susan Sarandon, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lena Dunham, Patricia Arquette, and Garcelle Beauvais filled out the room. It was the kind of gathering where you could look around and recognize almost every face, and where the collective net worth of the attendees probably exceeded the GDP of a small country.
Clarke’s Growing Panic
Clarke wasn’t the only Game of Thrones cast member in attendance. Kit Harington was seated at a different table across the room. At the time, Clarke was at the height of her fame on what was then the biggest show on television. Her face on magazine covers, and her character inspiring countless Halloween costumes.
Clarke had agreed to participate in the evening’s charity auction, offering the winning bidder a chance to watch an episode of Game of Thrones with her. What she didn’t anticipate was how nervous she would feel when the moment arrived. She had committed without fully thinking through what it would feel like to stand in front of a room full of celebrities and wait to see if anyone wanted to bid on her.
Months later, Clarke told the story on The Graham Norton Show. “There was an auction for a charity do that I was asked to take part in,” she explained. “So I offered time with myself.” She had agreed because it was for charity, so it would be fine. Then she got to the gala and realized who was in the room. “I get there and it’s basically the Oscars,” Clarke recalled. “There are so many celebrities in this room, and I suddenly remember that I said I would auction something off. So the fear grows. I was petrified, absolutely petrified.”
A Movie Star Raises His Paddle
The bidding started at $20,000. Pitt didn’t mess around. He came in at $80,000. Quadrupling the starting price in a single move and making it clear he was serious about winning. Clarke noticed immediately. She looked across the room, and there he was, paddle raised, actively bidding on her.
“As the bidding started I realised Brad Pitt was trying to buy me,” she told Graham Norton, still sounding amazed by it years later. “I looked across the room and he had his paddle up!” She genuinely thought someone was joking at first. Why would Pitt be bidding on a chance to watch Game of Thrones with her? The whole thing didn’t compute. But it was real, and it was happening, and one of the most famous actors in the world was waving his paddle in the air because he wanted to watch television with her.
The Oscar winner was clearly a fan of the show. This wasn’t some casual half-interested bid designed to look generous without actually committing, because Pitt wanted to win. He kept pushing, kept raising his paddle until the room started to notice. Brad Pitt was in a bidding war for the Mother of Dragons.
The King in the North Joins the Lot
At some point during the auction, Kit Harington offered to join Clarke for the viewing, and the stakes immediately went up. Suddenly, the winning bidder wouldn’t just be watching Game of Thrones with Daenerys. They’d be watching it with Daenerys and Jon Snow, two of the show’s biggest characters, together on a couch for one lucky fan.
For anyone who cared about the show, and in 2018 that was a lot of people, this was an extraordinary opportunity. Game of Thrones had become more than television by that point. It was the kind of shared cultural event that brought millions of viewers together week after week. A show famous for killing characters the audience loved and creating tension rarely seen in serialized drama. Clarke’s Daenerys sat at the center of many of its most memorable moments. Harington’s Jon Snow carried his own weight of fan devotion. Especially after certain plot twists that had kept viewers talking for years. To watch Game of Thrones alongside both of them would mean experiencing the show through the eyes of the people who had lived it.
The Mystery Bidder Who Beat Brad Pitt
Pitt pushed his bid to $120,000. It still wasn’t enough. Someone raised the stakes to $160,000, and Pitt bowed out. Clarke later said the winner was a friend of hers, though their identity was never made public. “My friend ultimately won, go figure,” she told the Hollywood Reporter roundtable, laughing about the outcome.
“Sadly, he was outbid and it didn’t work out,” Clarke told Graham Norton. But she was quick to add that the whole experience was “the best night” of her life. Having Brad Pitt publicly compete for the chance to hang out with you will do that to a person. During that same Hollywood Reporter roundtable, she called the auction “the most ridiculous experience of my entire existence” and used it as her answer to when she knew she had made it in the industry. Not the Emmy nominations, not the magazine covers, not the global fame. The moment she knew was when Pitt raised his paddle for her.
This wasn’t false modesty from an actress who had already conquered television’s most-watched drama. Clarke spent much of her early Game of Thrones years convinced she would be written off at any moment. “I just assumed that every time I read the script I was going to be written off because I was just crap,” she said, “and that they had had enough, and that this time was the last time.” The show was famous for killing off beloved characters, and Clarke assumed she would eventually be one of them. Brad Pitt bidding for her company gave her a kind of external validation that her own confidence could not create.
What Everyone Walked Away With
Pitt didn’t leave the gala empty-handed. He successfully bid $40,000 on a different auction item, an NBA weekend experience with the San Antonio Spurs. The package included tickets to a game, a ride on the team plane, and VIP seats to the team’s practice session in Texas. For a sports fan, it was a solid consolation prize. Even if it lacked the fantasy appeal of watching dragons with the Mother of Dragons. Sources at the gala said he was in a “great mood” throughout the evening. Thoroughly enjoying himself at his table and bopping his head along to James Taylor’s performance that closed the night. Whatever disappointment he felt about losing the Game of Thrones lot, he didn’t let it show.
Clarke scored her own auction win that night when she and DiCaprio locked into a quick bidding fight over a Josh Smith painting. DiCaprio opened at eighty thousand, and Clarke immediately pushed him out with a ninety thousand bid. The moment could have turned tense because the room watched two celebrities try to outspend each other. The auction team eased the mood when they brought out a second Smith painting, so both grabbed one for eighty thousand and ended the exchange on a light note.
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A Very Good Night for Haiti
By the end of the evening, the gala had raised nearly $4 million for Haiti relief efforts. The $160,000 that Clarke’s friend spent on watching Game of Thrones went directly to disaster relief, and so did Pitt’s $40,000 for the Spurs experience and Clarke’s $80,000 for the Josh Smith painting. Watching celebrities bid against each other made for good entertainment. But it also made people open their wallets wider than they might have otherwise, and that money was going somewhere that needed it.
Eight years after the earthquake killed 220,000 people and left 1.5 million homeless, communities in Haiti were still rebuilding. Penn’s organization had treated half a million patients at two free clinics in Port-au-Prince and employed nearly 350 people, 95% of them Haitian, to provide healthcare, education, and housing. The work was ongoing, the need was real, and evenings like this one kept it funded.
Why People Keep Passing This Story Around
There’s something about this moment that feels different from typical celebrity gossip. Both Clarke and Pitt operate at the highest levels of Hollywood fame, yet the auction made them feel like real people. Clarke showed genuine shock when people bid on her. This proves that even massively successful performers can feel like outsiders in certain rooms. Her panic before the auction, her disbelief when she saw who was bidding, her continued amazement years later when she tells the story. None of it feels performed. She really couldn’t believe it was happening, and that reaction is what makes the anecdote work.
Pitt’s willingness to pursue something he wanted publicly, and accept defeat just as publicly, showed a lack of ego that his immense fame might otherwise obscure. He didn’t win, and he didn’t seem to mind much. He stayed for the rest of the evening, enjoyed the music, and went home with a different prize. The story works because neither party came across as untouchable or above the moment. They came off as two famous people caught in a moment that felt funny and human. Surrounded by others who were doing the same thing for a good cause.
And somewhere out there, a friend of Clarke’s is sitting on one of the best celebrity stories never told. They paid $160,000 for a night of television with the Mother of Dragons and the King in the North, an evening that even Brad Pitt couldn’t buy. Whatever happened during that viewing party, they’ve kept it to themselves.
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