Emilia Clarke is no stranger to filming sex scenes, after years on the flesh-forward Game of Thrones, but filming the intimate moments on her latest Cold War project proved something else.
The original dragon-tamer, 39, is starring in the new spy thriller Ponies on Peacock in the US, in which she plays Bea, a so-called person of no interest (get it?). Or so it seems.
In actual fact, she’s a widow working undercover in Cold War Moscow, tasked by the CIA with honey-trapping high-level KGB agents to get intel.
While filming these intimate scenes, Clarke has said she ‘really made out a bunch’ with her co-stars and even broke a rib in the process.
The actor told TheWrap of one particular day on set: ‘Three men, in a number of hours. Just keep bringing it – I’m going to sit on this thing, you’re going to bring them in, we’re going to pretend to have sex. I broke a rib that day.’
Her co-star Haley Lu Richardson – who TV fans might recognise as Tanya’s dogged assistant in season two of The White Lotus – confirmed she really did.
‘She’s such a tiny little sensitive body, meant she broke a rib,’ Richardson told the publication, remembering the ‘parade’ of men coming into the makeup trailer to have their powder and paint removed after the scene.
Clarke said when she visited her doctor with the injury, they asked how she did it, and she decided to tell the full truth: ‘Sex! Times three!’
‘It didn’t fully break,’ the Game of Thrones alum clarified. ‘It just popped out a little bit.’
Ponies isn’t the only espionage show on the air at the moment, with The Night Manager on the Beeb every Sunday night, proving there’s certainly a growing audience for spy thrillers.
In the show, Clarke’s character Bea and Richardson’s Twila both work together as secretaries at the US embassy in 1970s Moscow.
It’s when their husbands both die in mysterious circumstances that they decide to go undercover for the CIA to get answers.
The show isn’t available to watch in the UK yet, but given that it’s a Peacock show, it will most likely land on Sky & NOW, although we don’t have a release date as of yet.
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