Image copyright HBO

Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke says she found the nude scenes "hard".

Speaking on actor Dax Shepard's podcast, she says she would "cry in the bathroom" before certain scenes - but adds this would have happened "whether there was nudity or not".

Her role as Daenerys Targaryen initially required her to take her clothes off quite a lot.

She thinks it was necessary for the story - but that the show would be "very different" if it was made today.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Emilia says her attitude to nudity is "very different" now

The actress, who's from London, got the part when she was 23.

It was her first big break in the industry.

"I took the job and then they sent me the scripts and I was reading them, and I was like, 'Oh, there's the catch,'" she told the podcast.

"But I'd come fresh from drama school and I approached it as a job.

"If it's in the script then it's clearly needed, this is what this is and I'm going to make sense of it. Everything's going to be cool."

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Emilia is now in romcom Last Christmas

She added: "I'd been on a film set twice before then and I'm now on a film set completely naked with all of these people, and I don't know what I'm meant to do.

"I don't know what's expected of me, I don't know what you want and I don't know what I want.

"Regardless of there being nudity or not, I would have spent that first season thinking I'm not worthy of requiring anything. I'm not worthy of needing anything at all.

"Whatever I'm feeling is wrong, I'm going to go cry in the bathroom and then I'm going to come back and we're going to do the scene and it's going to be completely fine."

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Emilia and Jason at the season three premiere in 2013

She says co-star Jason Momoa, who played her abusive, warlord husband helped her through the first series.

And, despite the fact she thinks we live in "shifting times for nudity", she wouldn't change how it was filmed between 2009 and 2010.

"I've had so many people say so many things to me about Khaleesi's nudity in the show. But people wouldn't care about her if you hadn't had seen her be abused. So you had to see it."

Emilia's now starring in the festive romcom Last Christmas.

She says she now has "fights on set" about whether nudity is necessary.

"Things are very, very different. I'm a lot more savvy with what I'm comfortable with, and what I am okay with doing."

HBO and the creators of Game Of Thrones have been contacted for comment.

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