• "Game of Thrones" was known for its explicit nudity and sex scenes.
• Many of the stars have spoken about their experience filming these scenes.
• Insider has compiled a list of what the stars have said.

Matt Smith says the show has "too much" sex.

"House of the Dragon" star Matt Smith told Rolling Stone that there might be "slightly too much" sex going on in the show.

"You do find yourself asking, 'Do we need another sex scene?'" the actor said. "And they're like, 'Yeah, we do.' I guess you have to ask yourself: 'What are you doing? Are you representing the books, or are you diluting the books to represent the time [we're living in]?' And I actually think it's your job to represent the books truthfully and honestly, as they were written."

However, the showrunners of "Dragon," Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik, told The Hollywood Reporter that the prequel will "pull back" on the number of sex scenes compared to "Thrones."

Maisie Williams thought her first sex scene was a "prank."

Maisie Williams essentially grew up on "Game of Thrones," having first joined the cast in season one, when she was 12.

It was only in the final season, when Williams was 22, that her character Arya Stark had her first sex scene with Gendry Baratheon.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Williams admitted she thought the scene was a prank on her by showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.

"At first, I thought it was a prank," Williams said. "I was like, 'Yo, good one.' And [the showrunners were] like, 'No, we haven't done that this year.' Oh, fuck!"

Williams later revealed that she was also surprised by the sex scene because she thought Arya was "queer."

Williams also said the showrunners tried to make the scene comfortable for her but that made the situation more awkward.

Williams said the showrunners tried to let her have as much control of Arya's sex scene as possible.

"David and Dan were like: 'You can show as much or as little as you want,'" Williams said. "So I kept myself pretty private. I don't think it's important for Arya to flash. This beat isn't really about that. And everybody else has already done it on the show, so… "

She continued: "In the beginning, everyone was really respectful. No one wants to make you feel uncomfortable which kind of makes you feel more uncomfortable, because no one wants to look at anything that they shouldn't look at, which in turn makes you feel like you look awful because everyone is kind of [turning away]. You want people to act more normal."

Joe Dempsie says he thought his sex scene with Maisie Williams was an "odd transition."

Gendry actor Joe Dempsie said he found the sex scene with Williams in season eight of "Game of Thrones" rather strange after seeing Williams grow up on the show.

Dempsie told The Independent in 2020: "It was an odd transition purely because I'd seen Maisie grow up. I'd met her when she was a child and, during the course of the first three seasons, it was something I was asked regularly because [George R.R. Martin's] books suggest there's a possible romance. It always made me slightly uncomfortable."

Dempsie added that he was often asked by book fans about the romance.

"They were asking me to comment on whether I – at the time, a 25-year-old man – would like my character to hook up with a 14-year-old," the "Skins" star said. "I always avoided answering the questions. But it was something I then had to think about."

He added that doing the sex scene with Williams when she was older was "absolutely fine" and he didn't want to "patronize her" by making a fuss on set.

Emilia Clarke says Jason Momoa supported her when she felt "uncomfortable" in her early sex scenes.

Emilia Clarke, who played Daenerys Targaryen, is one of the most outspoken stars to talk about their experience of filming nude and sex scenes for "Game of Thrones."

In 2019, she told Dax Shepard on his podcast "Armchair Expert" that Jason Momoa, who played her on-screen husband Khal Drogo, helped her through the difficult sex scenes early in the show.

"He was crying more than I was," Clarke said about Momoa filming a scene where his character sexually assaults Daenerys. "It's only now that I realize how fortunate I was with that because that could have gone many, many, many different ways."

She added: "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."

Clarke said she also felt "overwhelmed" by the amount of nudity in the first season, which she hadn't fully prepared for.

Emilia Clarke said that filming "Game of Thrones" sex scenes were awkward because her brother was a cameraman on the show

During an interview on "Jimmy Kimmel Live," Clarke said filming sex scenes in the final season was even more awkward because her brother was part of the camera department.

"It gets pretty tricky when filming love scenes," she said. "Yeah, there's some days when he's like, 'Oh I'll swing by,' and I'm like, 'No it's good! You can stay there.'"

Jason Momoa said he found it "really, really, really hard" to play his character.

Jason Momoa starred in the first season of the show as Khal Drogo, a Dothraki warlord who took Daenerys as his bride and sexually assaulted her on their wedding night.

When asked to reflect on his scenes as Khal Drogo, Momoa told the New York Times that he wouldn't want to play that role again.

"Well, it was important to depict Drogo and his style," the "Aquaman" star said. "You're playing someone that's like Genghis Khan. It was a really, really, really hard thing to do. But my job was to play something like that, and it's not a nice thing, and it's what that character was."

He continued: "It's not my job to go, 'Would I not do it?' I've never really been questioned about, 'Do you regret playing a role?' We'll put it this way: I already did it. Not doing it again."

Momoa also said writer David Benioff tried to get him to remove his modesty covering during his first sex scene.

In 2020, an oral history book about the series, "Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon," was published by former Entertainment Weekly editor James Hibberd.

In an account of Momoa's first sex scene with Clarke, Momoa said that writer David Benioff tried to make a change during the filming of the scene and get the actor to remove the modesty sock hiding his genitals. The "See" star retaliated by giving the sock to Benioff after the scene.

Momoa said (via the Belfast Telegraph): "That was because David had been like, 'Momoa, just take it off!' You know, giving me shit. 'Sacrifice! Do it for your art!' I'm just like, 'Fuck you, bro. My wife would be pissed. That's for one lady only, man.'"

He continued: "David and I love giving each other shit. So afterward, I ripped the thing off and kept it in my hand and gave him a big hug and a handshake and was like, 'Hey, now you have a little bit of me on you, buddy.'"

Kit Harington said filming his sex scene with Emilia Clarke was "unnatural and strange."

The season seven finale featured a sex scene between the series' leads, Jon Snow (Kit Harington) and Daenerys (Clarke).

At the time, the actors had been friends for multiple years and Harington was, in fact, engaged to another actor he met on the show, Rose Leslie, making the experience even more awkward.

"If you've known someone for six years and they're best friends with your girlfriend, and you're best friends with them, there is something unnatural and strange about doing a love scene," Harington told Vanity Fair in 2018.

Harington said that he pretended to throw up during a kiss scene.

During an interview with news.com.au, Harington said while filming, he and Clarke laughed through an intimate scene.

"But I mean, Emilia is wonderful, I love her, and I've loved working with her. And really, it's not hard to have to kiss her. But I did like pretending it was," he recalls. "I'd pretend to throw up when we had to kiss."

Rose Leslie said Kit Harington made her feel "safe" during their sex scene.

Earlier in the series, Harington had another sex scene with his now-wife, Rose Leslie.

In season three, Snow had a passionate scene with Leslie's character, Ygritte, one of the free folk who lived north of the wall.

Leslie recalled to Entertainment Weekly that the scene was filmed on a closed set.

"I felt very safe, and I remember enjoying that day just because it was a different element for both of those characters," Leslie said. "[Harington] was, as ever, a gentleman, and he made sure that I was comfortable where he was going to be positioned, and he would always then turn around when they called cut and the lovely wardrobe dailies would come in with a dressing gown, and then I would be covered."

She continued: "He was very considerate and made sure as much as possible that I didn't feel awkward standing in front of people with your tits out. So it's never going to be an enjoyable day, it's always going to be an awkward one, but he and the rest of the crew were incredibly considerate, and it's a conversation that we most certainly had in terms of where the boundaries lay."

Esmé Bianco says she feels "comfortable" about her scenes in "Game of Thrones."

Esmé Bianco, who played prostitute Ros in the HBO series, reflected on her sex scenes in 2019 after coming out as a domestic abuse survivor.

In an interview with Refinery29, she said that she had no regrets about any of her scenes.

"I feel very comfortable with what I did, and I was treated with respect the entire time," Bianco said. "But I do worry about young actresses who come into this business and may be coming in with their own baggage and not necessarily dealing with the scenes in the healthiest way for their mental health."

Bianco also praised the use of intimacy coordinators in productions.

The actor told Page Six: "In recent years [productions have] started hiring intimacy coordinators, especially since the #MeToo movement happened, which I think is very important to make actors feel comfortable."

Bianco said she was "so mentally tapped out" that she didn't notice how violent some of her sex scenes were.

In another interview with HuffPost, Bianco also admitted that she didn't realize how violent some of her scenes were due to her dealing with PTSD.

In a particular scene in season two, Joffrey Baratheon (Jack Gleeson) forces Ros to slap a fellow prostitute Daisy (Maisie Dee) with objects.

"Honestly, I was probably so mentally tapped out about my own past experiences at that point that I didn't really think about it. It didn't even cross my mind that that should be traumatic to me," Bianco said reflecting on the scene.

She added: "I watched the scene that Joffrey has me beat the other prostitute two weeks ago, and I was shocked by how graphically violent it was and how it had never occurred to me before that it might be triggering some of my trauma."

Bianco continued: "When I was filming that scene, I remember being super uncomfortable with it. ... It was pretty tense and everyone was squirming a bit," Bianco said. "But violence like that had been sort of normalized for me and, because of my experiences with intimate partner violence, I dealt with it and probably minimized it a lot more than I would have otherwise."

Bianco told HuffPost that there needs to be "more support" for actors in intimate scenes and other triggering moments.

Iwan Rheon says the rape scene with Sansa Stark "was the worst day of my career."

"Game of Thrones" had several controversial scenes that made fans question whether the show needed to be so graphic. One such scene was when Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon) raped fan-favorite Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) in season five.

Rheon has since told the Metro that the scene was the "worst day" of his career.

"That was horrible," he said. "Nobody wanted to be there. Nobody wants to do that, but if it's telling a story then you have to tell it truthfully."

He continued: "They didn't sensationalize it or anything. It was very, very hard watching. It's a horrible thing that happens, unfortunately, and it shouldn't be. It was the worst day of my career."

Sean Bean said that having intimacy coordinators can "spoil the spontaneity."

While Sean Bean, who played Ned Stark on the hit HBO series, did not talk about filming sex scenes on the show, he recently expressed his opinions about working with intimacy coordinators.

He told the UK's Sunday Times: "It would inhibit me more because it's drawing attention to things. Somebody saying, 'Do this, put your hands there, while you touch his thing...' I think the natural way lovers behave would be ruined by someone bringing it right down to a technical exercise."

This was met with a lot of backlash from multiple stars including Bean's costar in TNT's "Snowpiercer," Lena Hall.

Hall, who was mentioned by Bean in the Sunday Times interview as someone who was "up for anything" due to her theater experience, clarified on Twitter that she felt "comfortable" around Bean but she had no issue asking for an intimacy coordinator if she ever felt "weird, gross, over exposed etc."

"I do feel that intimacy coordinators are a welcome addition to the set and think they could also help with the trauma experienced in other scenes," the actor said.

Gemma Whelan says filming sex scenes can be a "frenzied mess" without an intimacy coordinator.

Last year, Gemma Whelan described sex scenes as a "frenzied mess" during an interview with the Guardian.

Whelan played fierce warrior Yara Greyjoy in the series, who famously had a sex scene with her own brother, Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen).

However, she told the publication that the scenes were not choreographed at all.

"They used to just say, 'When we shout action, go for it!' and it could be a sort of frenzied mess," Whelan said. "But between the actors, there was always an instinct to check in with each other."

She continued: "There was a scene in a brothel with a woman and she was so exposed that we talked together about where the camera would be and what she was happy with. A director might say, 'Bit of boob biting, then slap her bum and go!' But I'd always talk it through with the other actor."

Whelan added that including intimacy coordinators for sex scenes is a "step in the right direction."

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