Emilia Clarke Is Tired of People Criticizing the Sex Scenes on ‘Game of Thrones’

Game of Thrones is one of the most beloved shows on television, but there’s one element to it that’s quite polarizing: the sex scenes.

GoT is infamous for its gratuitous and sometimes problematic sex. It’s part of why so many people love the show…and why others hate it. Granted, much of the criticism concerning the nudity on GoT is valid (it has depicted sexual violence against women on several occasions) but not all of it. There’s a certain subset of fans who’re just annoyed by the amount of sex—consensual, good, healthy sex—that Game of Thrones shows. And that’s the chatter Emilia Clarke, who plays Daenerys Targaryen, has an issue with.

“I’m starting to get really annoyed about this stuff now because people say, ‘Oh, yeah, all the porn sites went down when Game of Thrones came back on.’ I’m like, The Handmaid’s Tale? I f-cking love that show, and I cried when it ended because I couldn’t handle not seeing it. That is all sex and nudity. There are so many shows centered around this very true fact that people reproduce,” Clarke told Harper’s Bazaar for its December/January issue. “People f-ck for pleasure—it’s part of life.”

Clarke expressed similar sentiments back in March, when she wrote an essay for The Huffington Post. “If you’ve watched Game of Thrones then, spoiler, you will have seen me in the nude,” she wrote. “There are plenty of ways in which people want me to respond to questions about this fact. And plenty of reasons why I do not feel the need to justify myself.”

Retweet. Whether you like the sex scenes on Game of Thrones or not, it shouldn’t have to be Clarke’s job to defend them. (It’s funny how the male actors on the show are rarely ask about their nudity.) At the end of the day, she’s an actress doing her job—and if she’s comfortable, that’s all that matters.

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