Emilia Clarke defended the program’s vivid sex and nudity over her eight seasons on HBO’s fantasy smash “Game of Thrones,” and advocated for the men and women on the show to be equally naked onscreen. Clarke is growing more critical of her time on television now that the series is done. Clarke stated she felt forced to go naked in “Game of Thrones” early on, which led to future projects believing she would be happy appearing nude, she said on Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast.

She complained of being forced into a “f-ck tonne of nudity” during the first season of the HBO smash programme, and how she didn’t think she had the right to speak out for herself and her body as a new —and young— actor.

She was informed that she would “disappoint” her fans if she didn’t strip down.

“I took the job and then they sent me the scripts and I started reading them, and I was like, ‘Oh, there’s the catch! But I’d come fresh from theatre school and I handled it as a profession, if it’s in the script then it’s plainly needed, this is what this is and I’m going to make sense of it. Everything’s going to be cool,” she shared with Shepard.

“I’m a lot more knowledgeable [now] with what I’m comfortable with, and what I am alright with doing,” Clarke added. “I’ve had confrontations 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, ‘Fuck you.’”

Clarke is reclaiming her storey and talks about how her experience on Game of Thrones taught her to be more forceful and in command in parts that followed after the show finished.

Clarke began filming Game of Thrones when she was 23 years old, and she informed Shepard that things on set had grown so awful that she would cry in the washroom before shooting certain sexual moments.

Before filming those difficult scenes, Clarke would remind herself, “Whatever I’m feeling is wrong, I’m going to weep in the toilet and then I’m going to come back and we’re going to do the scene and it’s going to be absolutely fine.”

Clarke had to struggle with everyone’s feelings, many of which were critical, objectifying, or plain hostile, on top of her anxiety with several naked moments.

“The reason I don’t Google myself is because when I completed Season 1, I only read the headlines about how big my ass was, why would a female do this…” Clarke explains. “And I’m like, ‘you know what? I’m a child, dude! Cut me some goddamn slack.”

Jason Momoa, Clarke’s co-star, was one of the few individuals who spoke up for her. Momoa not only cared after her, but he also let Clarke know that her thoughts were valid. She will be eternally thankful for the possibilities she got to work with him and for the way he treated her on the set of Game of Thrones.

“It was absolutely challenging, which is why the parts when I got to do them with Jason, were fantastic, because he was like, ‘No darling, this isn’t okay.’”

“He took care of me, too,” Clarke added. “In an atmosphere where I didn’t realise I needed to be taken care of.”

Clarke began to doubt the purpose for each naked scene as she continued to appear in them. She stated, “I’m flying through this first season and 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, I’d been on a film set twice before then, and I’m now on a film set fully nude 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.”

The fact that Clarke had Jason Momoa as a scene partner gave a silver lining to her early naked scenes. Clarke reflects on the programme, “It’s only now that I know how lucky I was with it. Because that might have gone in many, many, many, many other ways.”

Momoa, according to Clarke, was always on the watch for her on set and made sure her restrictions were respected: She explains, “He was an accomplished actor who had done a variety of stuff before coming on to this. He was like, “Sweetie, this is how it’s meant to be and this is how it’s not meant to be and I’m going to make sure that that’s the f*cking case… [he] was constantly like, ‘Can we have our f*cking robe? Can we have our goddamn robe? She’s shivering.’”

Emilia Clarke no longer feels forced to strip down for roles. She’s trained to state her ideas and dismiss anyone who seeks to place her in an embarrassing situation.