More than 10 years after one of television’s most talked-about scenes, Lena Headey set the record straight about a decision that sparked backlash far beyond Westeros.
Headey pulled back the curtain on the backlash that erupted after Cersei Lannister’s infamous “Walk of Atonement” in “Game of Thrones,” revealing she still found the outrage baffling.
“I was really shocked by the anger, by this idea that I’d duped the audience,” Headey told The Telegraph. “But by that point everyone knew [the cast], it was insane simply going anywhere, and I was with 3,000 extras.”
She explained that while acting is “a joy,” the scale of filming the scene would have made it impossible for her to fully inhabit the emotional performance if she had also been worrying about being naked in front of thousands of people.
“I wouldn’t have been able to do the emotional part of the job,” she told the outlet. “I’d have been in full-on defensive mode.”
Looking back, Headey said she was in a very different position than many younger actresses entering the industry. Her experience on set gave her the confidence to set boundaries she doesn’t believe everyone feels comfortable asserting.
“By that point, I’d been through the wringer,” the actress said. “I could stand up for myself. I’m not saying those actresses couldn’t, but they were much younger and more vulnerable, and had far less experience of being in front of people and the camera and performing. Whereas I was of an age where I’d just tit about and diffuse anything uncomfortable with idiocy.”
At the time, Headey told Entertainment Weekly some viewers believed she was “less of an actress” because she didn’t perform the nudity herself.
“I’ve done nudity. I’m not averse to it,” she explained in 2016. “But I know I’m a very emotional actor and I get really driven by that. In order to do my job, I allow myself to be really vulnerable. I don’t know any other way to do my job. Things really affect me. And the thought of being naked for three days and trying to contain her in the way she would be I think I would feel very angry. I didn’t want to be angry. I don’t think Cersei would be angry. I did what I thought she would do, emotionally.”
Headey praised body double Rebecca Van Cleave for taking on the physically demanding role, acknowledging that appearing nude on camera was far from easy. She also said being a mother and an established public figure made filming the nude portions herself feel like more than she was willing to take on.
“I didn’t phone it in,” she noted of her performance. “I was actually there for three days with Rebecca.”
For Headey, the controversy also reflected a much bigger issue she believes many actresses faced early in their careers.
“There was this rite of passage all young female actors had to go through, which usually involved snogging and falling in love, and having sex and showing your boobs,” she told The Telegraph. “They’d call them the ingénue parts, to make it sound nicer.”
The “300” actress admitted she rarely questioned those expectations when she was starting out because she was simply grateful to be working.
“But I just got on with it,” she explained. “I didn’t go to drama school, so I would just arrive on a set and be, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got a job.’ And when it came to those moments, I don’t think I even questioned that I should be safe. Instead, I’d go home and cry, or think, ‘Oh, that felt weird and too familiar.’ Now I look back and feel, ‘Hmm, that was rough.’”
Those experiences ultimately changed the way Headey viewed power dynamics throughout the entertainment industry.
“The weird protection that we offer predatory men in the business because of the disproportionate power they wield, set against the need among vulnerable actresses to work to put food on the table to get the job – it makes me very angry. A job can be completely soured by one person who, for some reason, is allowed to get away with it.”
She said the #MeToo movement exposed how widespread those experiences were and believes younger actresses today are far more willing to reject situations that make them uncomfortable.
“The attitude today is, ‘I’m not f—ing doing that,’” she emphasized.
