Clarke played Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones, who starts the show as a exiled princess who is then married to Dothraki warlord, Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa) to pay for an army by her brother Viserys Targaryen (Harry Lloyd), before becoming the ‘Mother of Dragons’ upon the birth of her three dragons.
The HBO show ran for eight seasons between 2011 and 2019, and over the years, Clarke has spoken about the challenges of filming some of the nude scenes in the show.
In fact, in an interview on the Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard podcast in 2019, she said she didn’t even know about the nudity and sex scenes when she accepted the part.
Emilia Clarke played Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones (HBO)
“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.
“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.
“… 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.
“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.”
Meanwhile, speaking on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert back in 2016, Clarke explained why she decided not to use a body double for a fully nude scene in the sixth season of the show.
Clarke didn’t use a body double for the scene (HBO)
Speaking about a scene in which Daenerys emerges from a burning building with her clothes completely charred away after killing all the Dothraki Khals, she said: “I did it before in season one and people like to talk about it.
“So I just wanted to come out and do an empowered scene, which wasn’t sexual. It was naked, but it was strong.”
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, she later added: “I’d like to remind people the last time I took my clothes off was season 3.
“That was awhile ago. It’s now season 6. But this is all me, all proud, all strong. I’m just feeling genuinely happy I said ‘Yes.’ “That ain’t no body double!”
