Posted on 12/02/2019 4:45:58 PM PST by Kaslin
What happens on the big screen doesn’t always stay on the big screen.
Actress Emilia Clarke, who rose to fame after starring in HBO’s Game of Thrones, recently revealed that she was pressured to film scenes naked for the show. She’s not alone – actresses from Evangeline Lilly to Jennifer Lawrence have admitted to either crying or drinking in response to filming scenes with little to no clothing.
Speaking on Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast, the 33-year-old expressed her disbelief when she first landed the role of Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones, which premiered in 2011.
“Obviously, I took the job,” she said in the podcast released late November. “They sent me the scripts and I was reading them and I was, it was like, ‘Oh, there’s the catch.’”
But finding out about the show’s nudity didn’t stop her.
Right out of drama school, she decided to “approach this as a job” and believed that “if it’s in this script, then it’s clearly needed.” But when she actually began filming the first season, which had a “f–- ton of nudity,” she felt a bit differently.
“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,” she remembered. “And now I’m on a film set completely naked with all of these people.”
She would dismiss her feelings, have a cry in the bathroom, and then return to filming. That’s when a co-star, Jason Momoa, stepped in. Momoa plays Khal Drogo, who rapes Daenerys after she’s sold into marriage with him. Later in the show, she develops feelings for him.
“The scenes, when I got to do them with Jason, were wonderful because he was like, ‘No, sweetie, this isn’t okay,’ and I’m like, ‘Oh,’” Clarke said.
She acknowledged that filming nude “is terrifying” and that, during rape scenes, Momoa was even “crying more than I was.”
A more experienced actor, Momoa knew more about what should and shouldn’t happen on set, she said.
“He was always like, “Can we get her a f--king robe? … She’s shivering.’ Like, it was a lot of that.”
Today, she says, she’s a “lot more savvy about what I’m comfortable with.”
“Like I’ve had fights on set before where I’m like ‘No, sheet stays up,’” she said, “and they’re like, ‘You don’t want to disappoint your Games of Thrones fans,’ and I’m like, ‘F--k you.’”
Later on in the show, when she filmed nude for the last time, she said she agreed: “This is mine, they’ve asked me to do it, and you know what, I’m f--king game.”
But even then, she said, “it brings into question, the thing of like, what it is like being under the gaze of people you’ll never meet.”
Sadly, Clarke joins a long list of actresses who have felt similarly. In 2018, actress Evangeline Lilly likewise revealed during a podcast that she was pressured to film nude during Lost.
“I’d had a bad experience on set with being basically cornered into doing a scene partially naked, and I felt I had no choice in the matter,” she recalled. “And I was mortified and I was trembling. When it finished, I was crying my eyes out.”
She added, during a UK interview that same year, that she drank to survive the role in general.
“Good god it was terrifying!” she exclaimed. “It really f***ed me up. Am I allowed to say that? I drank a lot to get through it. I didn’t sleep a lot. All alone, in a totally different culture, in a different country.”
According to a 2016 Maxim piece, other celebrities have admitted to drinking while filming sex scenes, including Jennifer Lawrence, Lizzy Caplan, and Keira Knightley.
Others respond in different ways. While filming a scene in Easy A, Emma Stone said she experienced an asthma attack while Reese Witherspoon, in Wild, had a panic attack.
Both Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman found their Black Swan sex scene uncomfortable. Titanic star Kate Winslet called one nude scene “sort of unethical.” And, following a sex scene in Spring Breakers, Vanessa Hudgens decided she never wanted to film something like that again.
In 2017, Salma Hayek wrote in the New York Times about being forced into a sex scene with another actress – by the infamous Harvey Weinstein.
Going as far back as 2000, one New York Times Magazine piece explored “The Pressure To Take It Off” and reported on actresses discussing their mixed feelings on nudity.
Actress Rosie Perez remembered her first time getting naked on camera came while filming Do the Right Thing.
“It wasn't really about taking off my clothes. But I also didn't feel good about it because the atmosphere wasn't correct,” she said. “And when Spike Lee puts ice cubes on my nipples, the reason you don't see my head is because I'm crying.”
Every actress, in the end, makes choices regarding what she will or will not film. At the same time, Americans should remain aware of how young women can be pressured or manipulated by Hollywood – and support films that value actresses not as mere sexual objects but as human persons.
I understand your concern...
ping
...and then there was Blue Lagoon...
I don’t watch such shows. It’s immoral. My husband is not as sensitive about it. If we’re watching tv, and a sex scene comes on, I get up and leave the room. I have to answer to God for my behavior. And so does everyone else. I look at things in the light of eternity. Why would I participate in something I know is displeasing to the Lord? If I’d be ashamed to watch something with Jesus sitting next to me, then I shouldn’t watch it, because, after all, the Lord is with us, always.
I watch a considerable amount of Asian television novellas.
The one thing I appreciate, is that most of them have no nudity at all. The women are beautiful and the story lines get the plot across just fine.
Can’t recall a single instance where nudity was a necessity to get the plot across, in American cinema.
Someone will probably point out a good example, but it just doesn’t set well with me.
I think about one of my former wives or my daughter, and know I wouldn’t want them to have to face playing nude scenes or not getting an acting if that were their field of work.
Why is acting so different than any other job? Nudity isn’t acceptable anywhere else.
Two people go to a bed making out and starting to disrobe. Nobody knows what happens next without nudity? Really?
she really ought to consider breadt implants. Not really to make them bigger just shaped better.
Don’t take your clothes off, fine...
I’m not watching anyways.
One of the best movie scenes ever! I laughed so hard the people in front of me moved seats.
Rich?
CC
How brave of her to speak out after the paychecks were deposited.
.....and then are marginally talented “actresses” like Jamie Lee Curtis who pretty much did pornography for many years and was glad to collect the paycheck.
Now she’s a nasty old leftist woman, dime a dozen, nothing special. And I’ll bet she now claims she’s a victim!
Sorry Jamie, no one wants to see you naked anymore, buh bye!
Wanting to see a beautiful woman naked does not make someone a pervert.
I wish I had this problem. If I was an actor people would pay good money NOT to see me naked. :-P
Just watched “Avanti” with Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills, from 1972, which has several nude scenes. It’s embarrassing early 70’s crap, trying to be edgy, but innocent compared to today’s crap. The nude scenes were entirely unnecessary.
Funny movie, overall, but the worst parts were not the gratuitous nudies but the lines on Nixon, Kissinger and the CIA that were clearly written by Hollywood survivors of the Committee on un-American Activities.
You take the King’s shilling, you become the King’s man.......
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And then there’s porno stars
Funny, I’ve never heard Roseanne Barr complain about this.
All of these pretty girls routinely using “f*ck” in normal conversation is certainly a turnoff. Wonder how many of them had to perform “favors” for Harvey Epstein or his equivalent to even get the role?
Harvey Epstein
Not sure if you did that on purpose but Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Epstein didn’t kill himself.
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