Game of Thrones star Lena Headey shared the details behind her choice to use a body double during her nude “Walk of Atonement” scene in Season 5.
Headey, who earned five Emmy nominations for playing the ruthless Cersei Lannister in the hit HBO series, received blowback from fans in 2017 when her use of a body double became public. The actress was stunned at the idea that she’d “duped the audience” and said she had the confidence to set boundaries for herself on set.
She had become so well-known at that point that “it was insane simply going anywhere, and I was with 3000 extras,” Headey said in a new interview with The Telegraph. “Acting is a joy, but it requires a lot of you. I wouldn’t have been able to do the emotional part of the job; I’d have been in full-on defensive mode.”
Game of Thrones, which is infamous for its sex scenes, violence, and nudity, came out before intimacy coordinators were a fixture of film sets. As a result, shooting the sex scenes was “a sort of frenzied mess,” Thrones star Gemma Whelan, who played Yara Greyjoy, said, and star Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen) admitted to crying after some of her sex scenes. Comfort during shoots was largely left to the actors.
“A director might say, ‘Bit of boob biting, then slap her bum and go!’,” Whelan said. “But I’d always talk it through with the other actor.”
Headey’s age and experience allowed her to stand up for herself and diffuse situations that made her uncomfortable. When she was starting her career as an actor, she began noticing “the weird protection” that predatory men benefit from in the industry, especially in contrast with young women.
“There was this rite of passage all young female actors had to go through, which usually involved snogging and falling in love, and having sex and showing your boobs,” she told The Telegraph. “They’d call them the ingénue parts, to make it sound nicer.”
For Cersei’s Walk of Atonement on Thrones, Headey said that her status as an established public figure and a mother affected her choice. Body double Rebecca Van Cleave stepped into the three-day shoot, earning Headey’s praise. Headey said the tone around nudity has shifted since the #metoo movement, making young actors more inclined to speak up.
“I think most young women I speak to now in this business are so savvy,” Headey said. “The attitude today is, ‘I’m not f---ing doing that’.”
