Emilia Clarke Turned Down Fifty Shades Role Because of Game of Thrones Nudity

Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke passed on erotic thriller Fifty Shades of Grey because the actress felt “pigeonholed” after disrobing for the nudity-heavy HBO fantasy drama.

When participating in a Hollywood Reporter roundtable with Danai Gurira (Avengers: Endgame), Niecy Nash (When They See Us), Patricia Arquette (The Act), Christine Baranski (The Good Fight), and Michelle Williams (Fosse/Verdon), Clarke called Fifty Shades director Sam Taylor-Johnson “a magician,” but admitted the nudity requirement for the sensual romance was a turn off.

“I love her, and I thought her vision was beautiful. But the last time that I was naked on camera on [Game of Thrones] was a long time ago, and yet it is the only question that I ever get asked because I am a woman,” Clarke said.

“And it’s annoying as hell and I’m sick and tired of it because I did it for the character — I didn’t do it so some guy could check out my tits, for God’s sake. So, that coming up, I was like, ‘I can’t.’ I did a minimal amount and I’m pigeonholed for life, so me saying yes to that, where the entire thing is about sensuality and sex and being naked and all of that stuff, I was just like, ‘No way am I going to voluntarily walk into that situation and then never be able to look someone in the eye and be like, no, you can’t keep asking me this question.’”

The former Daenerys Targaryen actress previously told The Sun the mandatory “huge amount of nudity” in the Fifty Shades franchise would have been a shadow that she “would have struggled to get out of,” saying she already gets “a lot of crap for nude and sex scenes.”

“Women hating on women,” Clarke said. “It’s so anti-feminist.”

Following the conclusion of Game of Thrones, Clarke next appears in true story crime thriller Above Suspicion, where she stars alongside Jack Huston, Johnny Knoxville, and Thora Birch, and Paul Feig-directed romantic comedy Last Christmas, starring alongside Henry Golding, Michelle Yeoh, and Emma Thompson.