Emilia Clarke is officially sick of the "Game of Thrones is practically pornography!" jokes. In an interview for the upcoming issue of Harper's Bazaar excerpted for People, Clarke defended the show's use of nudity, which was once considered scandalous.
"There are so many shows centered around this very true fact that people reproduce," Clarke told the magazine. "People fuck for pleasure — it’s part of life." She used the Hulu show The Handmaid's Tale as an example: The show has sex in it, but, as Clarke explained, the sex isn't the sole reason people watch the show.
"I fucking love [The Handmaid's Tale], and I cried when it ended because I couldn’t handle not seeing it. That is all sex and nudity," she said.
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As the aspiring queen Daenerys Targaryen, Emilia Clarke has had her fair share of sex scenes on Game of Thrones. Clarke, who is an outspoken feminist, has always been very vocal about those scenes. In July, she told Elle that she received "backlash" for her nude scenes in the beginning, and was thankful when she finally got to film a seemingly "feminist" sex scene. She recalled the scene in season 4 in which Daenerys takes control and decides to sleep with Dario (Michiel Huisman). (It's a hot scene.)
"I actually went up to [GOT co-creators David Benioff and Dan Weiss] and thanked them. I was like, ‘That’s a scene I’ve been waiting for!’" she exclaimed. "Because I get a lot of crap for having done nudes scenes and sex scenes. That, in itself, is so antifeminist. Women hating on other women is just the problem. That’s upsetting, so it’s kind of wonderful to have a scene where I was like, ‘There you go!’"
Even before then, though, Clarke's been defending her more R-rated scenes.
"How many times has [Daario actor] Michiel Huisman been asked about the fact he’s taken his clothes off a bunch?" she asked Entertainment Weekly in 2015. "Is that even a discussion? No."
It's 2017 — can we all just agree that sex is normal?
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