The British actress, who played Daenerys Targaryen on the now-completed show, detailed the pressures of her role on Dax Shepard's "Armchair Expert" podcast.
Six months out from the Game of Thrones series finale, Emilia Clarke has revealed that she felt uncomfortable performing some n-de scenes during the filming of the show. The actress behind Daenerys Targaryen, who assumed the role on the HBO show at the age of 23, explained that she would be in tears at times 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, there's the catch!'" she said on American actor Dax Shepard's "Armchair Expert" podcast. "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 going to make sense of it and that's what I’m going to do and everything's going to be cool."
Premiering in 2011, the TV series became notorious over its almost decade-long runtime for its explicit portrayal of s-x and violence.
"I've never been on a film set like this before," Clarke continued. "I'd been on a film set twice before then, and I'm now on a film set completely n-ked 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. Regardless of there being n-dity or not, I would have spent that first season thinking I’m not worthy of requiring anything. I’m not worthy of needing anything at all."
Now 33, Clarke held that she had "imposter syndrome times a million." 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 I was,” Clarke said. “It's only now that I realise how fortunate I was with that, because that could have gone many, many, many different ways. Because Jason had experience—he was an experienced actor who had done a bunch of stuff before coming on to this—he was like, 'Sweetie, this is how it's meant to be, this is how it's not meant to be, and I'm going to make sure that that's the fucking gaze.' He was always like, 'Can we get her a fucking robe? She's shivering!' He was so kind and considerate and cared about me as a human being.”
Clarke says she is now "a lot more savvy" with what she's comfortable with on set since Game of Thrones, especially in regards to n-dity.
"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.'" she said. "And I'm like, 'Fuck you.'"
