The Game of Thrones cast has been outspoken about the show’s plentiful sex scenes. Emilia Clarke (Daenerys) thanked showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss for the episode where the Mother of Dragons instructs Daario Naharis to take his clothes off (“That’s a scene I’ve been waiting for!”), while Sophie Turner (Sansa) made a dirty joke about Arya losing her virginity. On the flip side, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime) has criticized the show for making the performers do “degrading” things, and now Gemma Whalen (Arya) has opened up about how the sex scenes were a “frenzied mess.”
The Killing Eve actress told the Guardian, “They used to just say, ‘When we shout action, go for it!’, and it could be a sort of frenzied mess. But between the actors there was always an instinct to check in with each other.” Whelan brought up a specific example.
“There was a scene in a brothel with a woman and she was so exposed that we talked together about where the camera would be and what she was happy with. A director might say, ‘Bit of boob biting, then slap her bum and go!’, but I’d always talk it through with the other actor.”
Whelan also praised her on-screen brother, Alfie Allen (Theon), for a, um, memorable encounter in season two. “Alfie was very much, ‘Is this OK? How are we going to make this work?’ With intimacy directors, it’s choreography – you move there, I move there, and permission and consent is given before you start. It is a step in the right direction,” she said.
Whelan can be seen in the ITV series, The Tower, which premieres next week.
(Via the Guardian)