Emilia Clarke Says She Had 'Fights' Over Her Nude Scenes on 'Game of Thrones'
Emilia Clarke is revealing that she pushed back against the team behind Game of Thrones when it came to some nude scenes.
The 33-year-old actress recently paid a visit to Dax Shepard's podcast, Armchair Expert, where she had a deep dive conversation about playing Daenerys Targaryen on the hit HBO show and putting her foot down regarding how many times should would be willing to bare it all for the show.
"I know too much about nudity waivers," she lamented to her fellow actor while discussing her early days on the show. "I mean, this way back in the day. So, now things are very, very different and I'm a lot more savvy about what I'm comfortable with and what I am OK with doing. Like, I've had fights on set before where I'm like, 'No! Sheet stays up' and they're like, 'You don't want to disappoint your Game of Thrones fans' and I'm like, 'F**k you.'"
Clarke also took a moment to defend the nudity portrayed in the show's early days, arguing that showing her being victimized by her character's brother, Viserys Targaryen (Harry Lloyd), helped fans root for Dany.
"With this character, I've had so many people say so many different things to me about the nudity, specifically about Khalessi's nudity in the show and people wouldn't care if you hadn't seen her be abused," she stated on the podcast. "You wouldn't f**king care."
The leading lady also opened up about first discovering the nudity included in the pilot and how she dealt with it when taking on the role.
"Obviously I took the job and they sent me the pilot. They sent me the scripts and I was reading them and I was…it was like, 'Oh, there's the catch! OK. All right then,'" she said. "But I'd come fresh from drama school and I was like, 'Approach this as a job. If it's in the script, then it's clearly needed. Then this is what this is and I'm gonna make sense of it and this is my job and that's what I'm gonna do and everything's gonna be cool.'"
"I'm floating through this first season. I have no idea what I'm doing. I have no idea what any of this is," she continued. "I've never been on a film set like this before. I'd been on a film set twice before then and now I'm on a film set completely naked with all of these people… So 'whatever I'm feeling is wrong. I'm gonna go cry in the bathroom and then I'm gonna come back and we're gonna do the scene and it's gonna be completely fine.'"
And when filming her final nude scene for the show, in season six when she killed off a hoard of merciless Dothraki leaders, Clarke explained that she decided to embrace the moment.
"When I did the last nudity that I did for the show, which was walking through the fire -- second time 'round -- I was like, 'I am owning this. This is mine,'" she shared. "They've asked me to do it and, do you know what? I'm f**king game."
She also shared that when filming scenes with Jason Momoa, who briefly played her character's husband, Khal Drogo, on the show, he worked hard to ensure she was comfortable on set while filming the more intimate scenes between them.
"He took care of me too. In an environment where I didn't know I needed to be taken care of," she shared. "It's only now that I realize how fortunate I was with that… He was always like, 'Can we get her a f**king robe?! Can we get her a g*ddamn robe?! She's shivering!' Like, it was a lot of that."
This isn't the first time Clarke has opened up about the nudity included in GoT. In 2017, she took issue with the negative comments she'd encountered regarding the show's raciest moments.
"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,'" she told Harper's Bazaar. "There are so many shows centered around this very true fact that people reproduce. People f**k for pleasure -- it's a part of life."
Also, earlier this year, Clarke revealed that she turned down the lead role in Fifty Shades of Grey (which went to Dakota Johnson), at least in part, because she was tired of discussing her nudity in GoT -- and, she guessed, the film would likely continue the conversation.
"Well, Sam [Taylor-Johnson, the director] is a magician. I love her, and I thought her vision was beautiful. But the last time that I was naked on camera on [Game of Thrones] was a long time ago, and yet it is the only question that I ever get asked because I am a woman," she told The Hollywood Reporter. "And it's annoying as hell and I'm sick and tired of it because I did it for the character -- I didn't do it so some guy could check out my t*ts, for God's sake."
"So, that coming up, I was like, 'I can't.' I did a minimal amount and I'm pigeonholed for life, so me saying yes to that, where the entire thing is about sensuality and sex and being naked and all of that stuff, I was just like, 'No way am I going to voluntarily walk into that situation and then never be able to look someone in the eye and be like, 'No, you can't keep asking me this question,'" Clarke added.
See more on the actress below.
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