The British actress, who played Daenerys Targaryen in the now-completed series, detailed the pressures of her role on Dax Shepard’s ‘Armchair Expert’ podcast.
Six months away from the Game of Thrones series finale, Emilia Clarke has revealed that she felt uncomfortable performing certain n-de scenes while filming the series. The actress behind Daenerys Targaryen, who took on the role on the HBO show when she was 23, explained that she would sometimes be in tears before shooting n-de scenes.
“I took the job, and then they sent me the scripts and I was reading them, and I was like, ‘Oh, here’s the rub!'” she said on the Armchair Expert podcast. American actor Dax Shepard. “But I was fresh out of drama school and approached it as a job: if it’s in the script, it’s clearly necessary. It is what it is and I’m going for it. make sense and that’s what I’m going to do and it’ll be fine.”
Premiering in 2011, the TV series has become famous over its nearly decade-long run for its explicit depiction of sex and violence.
“I’ve never been on a film set like this before,” Clarke continued. ‘I’d been on a film set twice before, and now I’m on a completely n-ked film set with all these people, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, and I don’t’ 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 Whether there was n-dity or not, I would have spent this first season thinking that I’m not worth demanding anything, I’m not worthy of needing anything.
Now 33, Clarke said she suffered “a million times over from impostor syndrome”. She praised co-star Jason Momoa, who played her character’s husband, Khal Drogo, for standing up for her during such sensitive moments on set. During the podcast, Shepard brought up a particular scene in which Momoa’s character “virtually rapes” Daeneyrs on their wedding night.
“He was crying more than me,” Clarke said. “It’s only now that I realize how lucky I was with this, because it could have taken so many different ways. Because Jason had experience – he was a seasoned actor who had done a bunch of stuff before it got to this – he was like, ‘Honey, this is how it’s supposed to be, this is how it’s not supposed to be, and I’m going to make sure that’s that fucking look. He was always like, ‘Can we get her a fucking robe? She’s shaking! He was so kind and caring and cared about me as a human being.’
Clarke says she’s now “much savvier” with what she’s been comfortable with on set since Game of Thrones, especially when it comes to n-dity.
“I’ve had fights on set before where I was like, ‘No, the sheet stays up,’ and they were like, ‘You don’t want to disappoint your Game of Thrones fans,'” she said. “And I’m like, ‘Fuck you.'”
