One tried to shame her by saying, “You know, we stuck our neck out to hire you for this.” Payton eventually was allowed to wear a negligee for her scene with a female co-star, but she said the scene, choreographed by those men, still went “far beyond her comfort zone.” She said, “It was creepy.” Seagal then gathered a group of other men involved in the production to talk to Payton, the Washington Post said. She said, “He’s trying to think of what to say, and he goes, ‘You won’t even show your tits?’” Payton told the Post that Seagal was “kind of sitting there” after she said she didn’t feel comfortable. In the top-grossing films of 2016, 25.6% of speaking or named female characters were shown “heavily exposed,” partially nude or nude as compared with 9.2% of men, according to research done by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative.Īctress Ciera Payton recounted to the Washington Post how she faced an incredulous Steven Seagal when she raised concerns about doing a nude scene with another woman for his 2007 film “Flight of Fury.” Payton, then 18, had just arrived on the set in Romania for her first acting job when she learned about the nude scene. The burden of screen nudity also falls more heavily on women than on men. Sarah Jessica Parker and Debra Messing also have gone public to share stories about similar experiences involving other powerful men.
Salma Hayek described in 2017 how disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein threatened to shut down production on the 2002 film “Frida” if she didn’t appear fully nude in a sex scene with another woman. But the Washington Post also reported that actresses regularly contend with other subtle forms of coercion or, worse, threats and verbal abuse at the ends of directors and producers. The women may face the sort of peer pressure Clarke described – the idea that they aren’t fulfilling the creative demands of the story unless they get naked.
“I’ve been on a film set twice before then, and now I’m on a film set completely naked and I don’t know what to do and I don’t know what’s expected of me.”īut such experiences have long been a common situation for young actresses, usually at the start of their careers, the Washington Post reported in 2017. “I have never been on a film set like this before,” Clarke said. The actor alluded to having had such arguments on the GoT set as she grew into the role: “I’ve had fights on set before where I’m like, ‘No, the sheet stays up,’ and they’re like, ‘You don’t wanna disappoint your Game of Thrones fans.’ And I’m like, ‘Fuck you.But Clarke, 33, also told Shepard that it initially made her uncomfortable to strip down on a set in front of the crew and other cast members. Now, Clarke sets her own rules for shooting nude scenes in her up-and-coming films, saying she’s “a lot more savvy” and questions how much nudity is actually required in order for a scene to work. “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 fucking gaze.’ He was always like, ‘Can we get her a fucking robe? She’s shivering!’ He was so kind and considerate and cared about me as a human being.” “It’s only now that I realise how fortunate I was with that, because that could have gone many, many, many different ways,” she said of Momoa. “He was crying more than I was,” Clarke told Shepard. Clarke’s onscreen husband Khal Drogo (played by Jason Momoa) rapes her on their wedding night. One episode in particular proved difficult. I’m not worthy of needing anything at all.” “Regardless of there being nudity or not, I would have spent that first season thinking I’m not worthy of requiring anything. Read more: Princess Margaret’s Real 1965 Wardrobe Was Every Bit As Good As It Looks In ‘The Crown’