James Cosmo, who starred as Jeor Mormont in Game Of Thrones, has joked he ‘drew the short straw’ when it came to sex scenes on the often X-rated HBO series.
Game Of Thrones, which wrapped up in a not-so-neat little package in 2019, was known for its sex scenes and nudity as much as its graphic and violent storylines – but Cosmo missed out on all that.
As the original Night’s Watch commander, who sadly perished in season three, Cosmo didn’t get so much as a kiss from a fair Winterfell dame after his character took a vow of celibacy to man the keep.
The poor actor must be one of only a handful who didn’t get a love scene in the series.
He joked about the untouched Mormont to the Guardian: ‘In that show where everybody’s getting their kit off everywhere, I draw the short straw.’
The actor went on, adding it was a ‘wasted effort’ to try and get him a romantic scene now: ‘You know what? In my whole career, which is now like 56 years or something, I have only had a romantic kiss with one woman, in His Dark Materials. I’ve never had a love scene.’
Stars of the popular fantasy series – which also starred Sophie Turner as Sansa Stark and Kit Harington as Jon Snow – have spoken about the level of sex and nudity in the programme, with Emilia Clarke saying she felt pressure to get her kit off as Daenerys Targaryen.
Speaking to Dax Shepard on his Armchair Expert podcast, the Last Christmas actress said: ‘I’m a lot more savvy [now] with what I’m comfortable with, and what I am okay with doing. I’ve had fights on set before where I’m like, “No, the sheet stays up”, and they’re like, “You don’t wanna disappoint your Game of Thrones fans”. And I’m like, “F*** you”.’
On the nudity on GoT, Emilia said: ‘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!” 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 gonna make sense of it… Everything’s gonna be cool.’
The Khaleesi star continued: ‘So I came to terms with that beforehand, but then going in and doing it… I’m floating through this first season and I have no idea what I’m doing, I have no idea what any of this is. I’ve never been on a film set like this before, 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 and I don’t know what’s expected of me, and 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 gonna cry in the bathroom and then I’m gonna come back and we’re gonna do the scene and it’s gonna be completely fine.’
Elsewhere in the chat, Cosmo lifted the lid on his demise – after he was killed in a mutiny by his own men – admitting he felt his death in the blood-thirsty George RR Martin saga was not a surprise.
He explained: ‘I didn’t read the books when I took the part. But I’m a fanatical fly fisherman, and I go over to my great friend in Washington state in America, and we fish for steelhead out there.
‘Now Beau, my friend, is a real redneck. He doesn’t read anything and his writing is awful. Anyway, when I said I’d do this series, he bought the books. I don’t know how he did it, but he sat down and he read all of them.
‘I made time to go over and see him, and we’d be fishing away, and he’d say: ‘Well, James, this has happened and that’s happened and you’re still alive, kid.’ I’d say: ‘Oh, good, good.’ Then one day he said: ‘James, they’re drinking beer out of your skull.’ So my death wasn’t exactly a surprise.”’
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