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(Image credit: HBO)

Emilia Clarke has had a brilliant run since kickstarting her acting career playing Daenerys Targaryen as part of the Game of Thrones cast. GOT was not her very first role, but it was the one that put her on the acting map; yet, the job may have been groundbreaking but it came with a bit of discomfort, too, particularly given Dany’s arc in Season 1. The good news? She got to film some of her most uncomfortable scenes with TV vet Jason Momoa, who was there to help navigate the sex and nudity appearing on HBO (now Max) required.

Clarke has spoken in the past about “feeling pressured” to perform naked for certain Daenerys Targaryen scenes. She’s always been clear Momoa was really there for her when she was still relatively new to Hollywood and didn’t know exactly how to navigate complex situations. But when she started filming the show, she didn’t feel super empowered to comment on what made her feel comfortable and what didn’t. Plus, she’s spoken about how her role in Game of Thrones nearly didn’t pan out in the first place.

Emilia Clarke Really Had To Fight To Land The Daenerys Targaryen Role

She told the Armchair Expert podcast the show had to really push to hire her at 23 and it was really touch and go. They’d already filmed the infamous unsuccessful original pilot and the actress was coming in “off the back” of that. She first met with “David, Dan, Carolyn Strauss and Frank Doelger in a little room in Soho” and auditioned for them. That wasn’t enough.

She then had to fly all the way to Los Angeles to put on a little show for HBO execs, and the whole thing was so unnerving that years later she told Dax Shepherd she “felt like [she] blacked out for the whole experience.” She said:

Beforehand, Frank had taken me aside and was like, ‘Listen sweetie. There’s gonna be things that they might ask you to do outside of just doing the scenes. I’m like, ‘OK cool. Right. What does that mean?’ And he was like, ‘It’s cool, everything’s fine, I just want you to be aware they might ask you some questions. blah blah blah. Be prepared. It’s all good!’ Little did I know they were gunning for HBO to sign off on me because I was a complete unknown. Total complete gamble. So I was going in with their hopes as well as my own. At the end I was so nervous, so scared. I did not look willowy or tall or any of the things they expected the chick to be.

Clarke had read the books twice at this point preparing for the audition, so she already knew she didn’t quite fit George R.R. Martin’s idea of Daenerys, who was “tall” and “willowy.” She said the interview itself was in a big auditorium and she even did some insane stuff, like the chicken dance, so she was not sure she landed the role – particularly given she was such a newcomer in the industry and it was such a big role. But she nailed it.

Then she got the scripts.

Emilia Clarke On Meeting Jason Momoa And How He Helped Her

After landing the lead as Daenerys Targaryen, she realized that nudity was written into the script and required. Which was fine, but she also didn’t know how to advocate for herself or what was OK and not OK being new to the set. She specifically said it was “hard” and she was well aware she was “new to the game and realizing that in a hair’s breadth it could all disappear.”