We've known for a while that the Fifty Shades franchise looked at a lot of actors and actresses to lead the franchise. Some of them, like the originally-attached Charlie Hunnam, felt like the role was too germaphobic, while some, like Emilia Clarke, did not see the gig to be a good fit. The Game of Thrones actress recently addressed why she wasn't pumped to join the Fifty Shades family, and unlike what she has previously stated, she now says it was not all the nudity that turned her off. More specifically, it was the "enormity" that turned her off. She explained:
It genuinely wasn't a nudity thing. I just knew the enormity of what that was... and I just didn't think I could take that.
According to the Game of Thrones and Solo: A Star Wars Story actress, she really hadn't been turned off by the nudity that was necessary for a successful Fifty Shades of Grey movie. In a lot of ways, her comments to THR makes sense. Emilia Clarke has been naked numerous times on Game of Thrones. She was nude a lot in the early seasons of the show, and had a big nude scene again in 2016, even though she was offered a body double. She also stripped for a scene in Breakfast at Tiffany's where she gets into a bathtub. Previously, she hasn't been particularly afraid to talk about baring it all for audiences, although she did say it didn't go over quite as well when one of her family member's caught an episode of Game of Thrones where she dropped trou.
Still this is a big turnaround from Emilia Clarke's previous stance. She previously straight up said:
I'd done nudity before and was concerned with being labelled for doing it again.
At the time, Clarke also revealed she had a couple of meetings with Fifty Shades of Grey director Sam Taylor-Johnson and decided it wasn't the best fit. It's a little odd for an actor to totally change his or her stance on a gig they did or didn't take, but perhaps the answer really is that she didn't want to be connected to an R-rated franchise that was simply all about the sex scenes. Perhaps by the "enormity" of what the franchise is, she just didn't want to have to deal with all the questions about modesty thongs, corsets and, yes, even "wee-bags." Perhaps there are other reasons behind why she said no and she simply hasn't wanted to offend anyone involved in the movies. There could be any number of reasons why she didn't move forward in the casting process, and all theories lead to the same fact: She didn't join the movie franchise, leaving the door wide open for Dakota Johnson to move from being a TV star to the star of her own movie franchise, and leaving the door open for Emilia Clarke to take on PG-13 roles such as Terminator Genisys and Solo: A Star Wars Story. All's well that ends well.
You can catch the third and final movie in the trilogy, Fifty Shades Freed on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital right now. You can also catch Emilia Clarke in Solo: A Star Wars Story, out on May 25.
