Emilia Clarke says she would cry before sex scenes with Jason Momoa on Game of Thrones

Emilia Clarke became a household name following her portrayal of Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones - but it took a lot of courage for her to nail her big break.

She was just 23 when she started filming on the hit fantasy series, and she admitted she found her plentiful nude scenes 'terrifying'.

In an interview on the Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard podcast in 2019, she said she didn't even know about the nudity and the sex scenes when she accepted the part.

HBO

"I took the job and then they sent me the scripts and I was reading them, and I was like, 'Oh, there's the catch!'" she recalled.

"But I'd come fresh from drama school and I approached it as a job: if it's in the script then it's clearly needed. This is what this is and I'm going to make sense of it and that's what I'm going to do and everything's going to be cool."

"I've never been on a film set like this before," she continued.

"I'd been on a film set twice before then, and I'm now on a film set completely naked 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.

"Regardless of there being nudity or not, I would have spent that first season thinking I'm not worthy of requiring anything. I'm not worthy of needing anything at all."

Clarke admitted she had 'imposter syndrome times a million' on the set, but credited her co-star and on-screen husband Jason Momoa (Khal Drogo) with making the process as pain-free as possible.

HBO

Asked about a scene in which he 'virtually rapes' her on their wedding night, Clarke - now 36 - replied: "He was crying more than I was.

"It's only now that I realise how fortunate I was with that, because that could have gone many, many, many different ways.

"Because Jason had experience – he was an experienced actor who had done a bunch of stuff before coming on to this – he was like, 'Sweetie, this is how it's meant to be, this is how it's not meant to be, and I'm going to make sure that that's the f***ing gaze.'

"He was always like, 'Can we get her a f***ing robe? She's shivering!'

"He was so kind and considerate and cared about me as a human being."