Emilia Clarke Was Pushed to Do Nudity on Non-‘Thrones’ Projects to Appease ‘GoT’ Fans

Emilia Clarke is the latest guest on the Armchair Expert podcast, which boasts a recent roster of appearances including Judd Apatow and Elizabeth Banks. And while the entire Clarke discussion is worth a listen, a section of the interview dealing with Game of Thrones and nudity is receiving the bulk of the headlines attention.

Clarke praised the on-set professionalism of Thrones co-star Jason Momoa during their scenes together, prompting an observation from host Dax Shepard on nudity in general and how it’s often unfairly more expected of women than of men. 

“Season 1 was what it was,” Clarke responded around an hour into the podcast. “It was a fuckton of nudity . . . Obviously, I took the job and they sent me the pilot. They sent me the scripts and I was reading them and it was, ‘Oh, there’s the catch, OK, alright then.’ But I came fresh from drama school and was like ‘Approach this as a job. If it’s in this script then it’s clearly needed and this is what this is. I’m gonna make sense of it and it’s my job and that’s what I’m going to do and everything’s gonna be cool.'”

During her early days on the series, the actress explained, she didn’t feel comfortable speaking up about any objections to how more intimate scenes were handled.

“I have no idea what I’m doing, I have no idea what any of this is,” she said. “I’ve never been on a film set like this before. I’ve been on a film set twice before then and now I’m 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, regardless of whether there’s nudity or not.”

Clarke added that it was “definitely hard,” which is why she was so appreciative for the scenes she did with Momoa. “He was like, ‘No, sweetie. This isn’t OK.’ And I’m like ‘Oh.'”

Shepard then noted that, while he’s also shot some nude scenes during his career, that’s not a fair comparison given that film crews are largely dominated by men.

Nowadays, Clarke said she’s grown “a lot more savvy” about what she’s comfortable doing onscreen, though her Thrones years have since been used by gross collaborators on other projects as a tool for attempting to pressure her into more of the same.

“I’ve had fights on set before where I’m like ‘No, sheet stays up!’ and there like ‘You don’t wanna disappoint your Game of Thrones fans’ and I’m like ‘Fuck you’ . . . I feel like I’ve seen enough now to know what is actually needed,” she said. “Because that’s the other thing I was also, little did I know, protected by the show in terms of the storytelling being at a very high level.”

Catch the full interview above and/or right here via the Armchair Expert site.