After the actor spoke of how she had felt pressured into some of the many n-de scenes on Game of Thrones, Roisin O’Connor argues that the s-xualised violence on the show was enough of a red flag to suggest its female cast were being treated more like props than actors
The n-dity in the early seasons of Game of Thrones was so famous that it spawned its own Saturday Night Live skit. Lengthy exposition was usually relayed in brothels, as if the writers were worried the audience would get bored if there wasn’t skin on display (usually a woman’s). Worse were the frequent scenes of s-xual violence, which served little to no purpose in furthering the plot – despite showrunners insisting that they did.
Emilia Clarke, who starred as Daenerys Targaryen in all eight seasons of the hit HBO show, recently spoke about those early scenes, revealing that she had no idea n-dity would be required of her until after she had signed on for the role.
“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 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. 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.”
Clarke has, she said, become more “savvy” in the years since. “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*** you.’”
It is a little sad, though, that she felt her lack of experience was the culprit in those early days. It’s not the actor’s job to make sure they feel safe and secure on set – that should be a given. Too often, it isn’t. So it was a relief to see, a day after Clarke’s comments were aired, that Directors UK has published its first guidelines for scenes involving n-dity and simulated s-x.
The guidelines advise a ban on full n-dity in any audition and no semi-n-dity in first auditions. By their nature, it says, auditions are based on a “power imbalance”. Performers can feel as though they have no choice but to do things that make them feel uncomfortable. “The director, as the creative lead on a production, should set the tone for a professional and respectful on-set environment,” said Susanna White, chair of the Directors UK film committee.
From the sounds of it, Game of Thrones showrunners DB Weiss and David Benioff could have done with such guidelines. Rarely was there a scene in which a female character didn’t disrobe. Somewhat disappointingly, Clarke went on to partially defend her scenes, claiming that “people wouldn’t care about [Daenerys] if you hadn’t seen her be abused”. It’s the same logic that Weiss and Benioff used every time critics questioned the relevance of a scene of s-xual violence, such as the horrific rape of Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) in season five – which sparked such an uproar that the show finally started to tone it down.
In a conversation between Sansa and the Hound in the eighth and final series, she tells him that if she hadn’t been raped, or suffered myriad other horrors, she wouldn’t be such a strong, confident woman. What the writers failed to realise was that Sansa was strong in spite of being s-xually assaulted, not because of it. This is the essence of survival.
