In a week where Directors UK, the guild for British screen directors, has issued new guidelines to its members for shooting nude and simulated sex scenes on productions, Game of Thrones actress Emilia Clarke has been reflecting on her experiences on HBO’s epic fantasy series, and how she felt overwhelmed by the “fuck ton of nudity” in the show’s first season.
“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!’” said Clarke 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, this is what this is and I’m gonna make sense of it… Everything’s gonna be cool.”
“So I came to terms with that beforehand, but then going in and doing it,” she continued. “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. 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.”
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“Regardless of there being nudity 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,” Clarke added. “Whatever I’m feeling is wrong, I’m gonna 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.”
Clarke went on to reveal that her co-star Jason Momoa, who played the Dothraki warlord Khal Drogo, supported her through the first season, and his advice helped her to build her confidence with regards to challenging directors over her misgivings: It was definitely hard, which is why the scenes when I got to do them with Jason were wonderful, because he was like, ‘No, sweetie, this isn’t okay.’ And I was like ‘Oh.’ Now things are very, very different. I’m a lot more savvy with what I’m comfortable with, and what I am okay with doing. 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, ‘Fuck you.'”
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Following this year’s conclusion to Game of Thrones, Clarke has went on to star in the festive rom-com Last Christmas alongside Henry Golding, and also has the Phillip Noyce-directed crime thriller Above Suspicion in the can.
