Anyone who has watched Game Of Thrones knows that it is not a show for the faint hearted or easily offended. One of the main reasons for this is the very graphic, often animistic sex scenes. One character that has been involved in more scenes of sex and nudity that most is Daenerys Targaryen, the last of her kind and rightful heir to the Iron Throne of Westeros. Canada.com have a very interesting article covering filming of the second season. In it Emilia Clarke discusses those scenes, what may lay in store for Dany, and reveals that those dragons glimpsed at the end of the first season will be quite a bit bigger when we see them again.
Clarke, who found herself at the heart of many of those racy scenes, admits she did a double take when reading some scripts. But she makes no apologies.
``We've been able to take it to a very real level. It was never intended to be a show for kids,'' she says. ``It's gritty in a realistic way.''
Clarke says the strong, ambitious female characters - including Dany - are ``more interesting'' than the men, because it takes such ``guts'' and ``strength'' for them to thrive in the series' archaic, male-oriented world.
Daenerys's story centres on her quest to return home from overseas to re-take her murdered father's stolen throne. But that also means she never gets to film with the rest of the cast.
``Sometimes (I) feel like the kid left out - the weirdo with the silver hair that no one likes to talk to,'' she says. ``There is definitely an element of that. But then, at the same time, that fuels the character, because she is so desperate to get home to where everyone else is.''
The new season will feature more of Daenerys's newly hatched dragons, first glimpsed in the season-finale cliffhanger. ``They're growing bit by bit. . . . (We're) feeding them well,'' she jokes of her computer-generated pets.
``You feel the weight (of responsibility) on her shoulders a lot more in this season,'' Clarke added, noting her character's grand arc in the first season, from helpless girl to burgeoning warrior queen. Will Daenerys go even further down a path of darkness?
``She could be leaning that way,'' she says with a coy smile.