Emilia Clarke Had a Terrible Time Fighting for Her Right to Stay Dressed in Game of Thrones
For the actress, filming Game of Thrones was a struggle: the writers wanted her to do nude scenes all the way, and Clarke was extremely uncomfortable with that.
When she was cast for the role of Daenerys Targaryen, Emilia Clarke was fresh out of drama school. Game of Thrones immediately launched her to international stardom and brought her money and fame; however, there was a darker side of that experience that Emilia hated with burning passion — especially, at the start of GoT.
The young actress found shooting nude scenes extremely troubling, and each time she had to do one, it caused immense stress upon her. As soon as Clarke took the offer and learned about the abundance of those scenes involving her character, she realized that her fast-approaching fame is going to cost her many tears.
“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!’ 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,” the actress shared.
Despite her best attempts at staying calm and collected, when the time to shoot her first nude scene arrived, Emilia was petrified. It was her third time on the set, and she didn’t know anyone around her well — and she had to undress before them.
“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,” Clarke recalls.
The actress is grateful to her co-star Jason Momoa for being “kind and considerate”: Emilia says he’d always ensured she didn’t have to stay nude for a second longer than it was needed. Later down the line, as both she and her character became more powerful and free, Clarke was straight-up refusing such scenes by default.
“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*ck you,’” the actress says.
Despite the extremely uncomfortable experience, Emilia managed to fight back at one point, and in the later seasons of GoT, she only had one scene — with Kit Harrington. There, the actress knew it was crucial for the plot, so she made an exception; she was still troubled by it but filmed it for the sake of the show.
Sources: Armchair Expert, THR