After six years as Daenerys Targaryen on Game of Thrones, Emilia Clarke has plenty of reasons to be proud. She’s shown off everything from her acting to her mastery of fake languages to a whole lot of her skin. The latter came up for a major nude scene in a recent episode that was actually super relevant to the plot and not at all gratuitous, but it did lead to a regrettable moment for Clarke…and her parents. Here’s what she had to say about her parents catching her nude episode of Season 6:
So it was kind of like, my parents said, ‘We’re watching the show, but darling, you’re not doing much this season!' I said, 'Well, watch this one. Watch tonight,' and they were trying to get spoilers out of me and on and on, so I sat them down and said, ‘Let’s watch it!’ and then instantly regretted it…My dad’s like, 'Again?'
Emilia Clarke’s story to Kelly Ripa and Fred Savage on Live with Kelly is both hilarious and cringeworthy. It’s nice to see that she has enough of a sense of humor to tell the awkward tale so soon after it happened. Dany has been keeping her clothes on for the past few seasons; it's no wonder her parents might have been surprised (among other emotions) to see her going nude again in Season 6.
For her part, Clarke's place in the epic scene was about so much more than nudity that it actually makes sense that the nakedness would slip her mind and she would watch it with her parents. Dany was naked because her clothes burned off her of as she roasted a tent full of khals alive. The scene was about Dany seizing control of an army that could help her to take the Seven Kingdoms, not about Emilia Clarke going topless.
Still, it’s not hard to see why the actress' parents might have been more preoccupied by the nakedness than the narrative importance. They couldn’t have expected that their daughter would excitedly join them to watch an episode that ends with her going nude in front of a burning tent before a horde of Dothraki, could they? Check out the clip from Live with Kelly to see what else Clarke had to say about watching this particular Game of Thrones episode with her parents:
This wasn’t the first time that Emilia Clarke has gotten into a sticky situation with her family due to her nudity on Game of Thrones. Way back in Season 1, Clarke did warn her parents that she wouldn’t be wearing clothes in all her scenes, but she left that little detail out to some of her other relations. She ultimately had a conversation with her uncle about how long she was naked that is probably burned into her memory forever.
Interestingly, Clarke’s first nude scene in several seasons came after she made some comments about how nudity should be handled on television. She wasn’t shy about believing that nudity and sex scenes should always serve a purpose if part of a scene, and she even pitched for some equal opportunity nudity to get the men losing their clothes as frequently as the women.
Game of Thrones airs on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO. There’s no saying if we’re in for any more episodes featuring nakedness from Emilia Clarke, but we can bet that she won’t be watching them with her parents if there are.
