"Game Of Thrones" Star Emilia Clarke Felt Pressured To Do Nude Scenes

It turns out that even a badass like Emilia Clarke has had to deal with her fair share of uncomfortable experiences in the entertainment industry. On Dax Shepard’s podcast, Armchair Expert, Clarke revealed that a lot of the nudity she had to do as Daenerys Targaryen in the earlier seasons of Game of Thrones did not sit well with her, but that she felt pressured to strip down on screen. Despite eventually getting overwhelmed by what she described as the "f*** ton of nudity" in the well-known series, she initially tried to find the meaning in all the nakedness. She told herself that "if it’s in the script then it’s clearly needed, this is what this is and I’m gonna make sense of it." 

Once the cameras started rolling, though, the discomfort hit, but as an actress new to the scene at the time, she didn't feel worthy of expressing her problems with any of the material. "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... 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," she shared. 

Not only did she feel pressure on the GOT set, but this pressure followed her to other projects. All the nudity that was now expected from Emilia as Daenarys quickly "set a swift precedent for Clarke’s budding career." “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.’” While many of Emilia's fans would likely be more disappointed to find out about how uneasy she was about all the nudity in the first place, she assures us that things are different now. "I’m a lot more savvy [now] with what I’m comfortable with, and what I am okay with doing." Glad to hear our favourite dragon queen is not taking any of the bullsh*t anymore.