Emilia Clarke Said She Was Pressured Into Doing ‘Game Of Thrones’ Nude Scenes And Had ‘Fights On Set’ About Nudity

Emilia Clarke revealed that she was pressured to do nude scenes on Game of Thrones despite not wanting to do nudity when she was acting as Daenerys Targaryen. The Khaleesi actress said that she was so vehement about not doing nude scenes there would be “fights on set.”

Emilia Clarke made the allegations during an interview on Dax Shephard’s Armchair Expert podcast on Monday. Clarke said she felt overwhelmed by the “f*ck ton of nudity” in the first season of Game of Thrones.

“I’m a lot more savvy [now] with what I’m comfortable with, and what I am okay with doing,” Clarke told fellow actor Dax Sheppard about her boundaries for appearing nude on screen.

“I’ve had fights on set before where I’m like, ‘No, the sheet stays up,’ and they’re like, ‘You don’t wanna disappoint your Game of Thrones fans.’ And I’m like, ‘F*ck you,’” Emilia bellowed.

“I took the [Game of Thrones] job, and then they sent me the scripts, and I was reading them, and I was, like, ‘Oh, there’s the catch,'” she said alluding to the nude scenes.

“But I’d come fresh from drama school, and I approached [it] as a job – if it’s in the script, then it’s clearly needed, this is what this is, and I’m gonna make sense of it… Everything’s gonna be cool,” she explained.

Before becoming a world-famous star on Game of Thrones, Clarke had only appeared in three projects: a one-time appearance in a TV series, a role in a short, and in a lowly-rated TV movie titled Triassic Attack.

“I’m floating through this first season, and I have no idea what I’m doing, I have no idea what any of this is,” Clarke explained. “I’ve never been on a film set like this before, I’d been on a film set twice before then, and I’m now on a film set completely naked with all of these people, and I don’t know what I’m meant to do and I don’t know what’s expected of me, and I don’t know what you want, and I don’t know what I want.”

Clarke, who continued to star in Game of Thrones for all eight seasons, has defended the nudity in fantasy HBO TV show in the past. In a Harper’s Bazaar interview from November of 2017, Clarke was in favor of nudity in telvision.

“I’m starting to get really annoyed about this stuff now because people say, ‘Oh, yeah, all the porn sites went down when Game of Thrones came back on,’” Clarke said in the interview. “I’m like, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale?’ I f*cking love that show, and I cried when it ended because I couldn’t handle not seeing it. That is all sex and nudity.”

“There are so many shows centered around this very true fact that people reproduce,” the Khaleesi actress continued. “People f*ck for pleasure — it’s part of life.”

Clarke credits her GoT co-star Jason Momoa for being the one to encourage her to stand up for herself. “It was definitely hard, which is why the scenes, when I got to do them with Jason, were wonderful,” Clarke said.

In regards to the management pressuring her into doing nude scenes, Clarke said the Khal Drogo actor would tell her, “No, sweetie, this isn’t okay.” Clarke added, “And I was like, ‘Ohhhh.'” Momoa would push her to create boundaries on her nudity

However, Momoa didn’t always seem to be all about empowering women. At the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con, Momoa told the audience that he enjoyed being on Game of Thrones because he got to “rape beautiful women.”

“As far as sci-fi and fantasy, I love that genre,” Momoa said. “It’s just that there’s so many things you can do, like rip someone’s tongue out of their throat and get away with it. And rape beautiful women and then have them fall in love with you, you know what I mean?”

Emilia Clarke’s Khaleesi character was raped by Jason Momoa’s Khal Drogo on their wedding night.

Emilia, who was paid $500,000 per episode in the final GoT season, now has a net worth of $13 million.

[IndieWire]