Lena Headey has ridden the Game of Thrones season finale for almost a week now, as time-shifted fans of the show catch up to everyone else, desperately avoiding social media in their rush to watch the show.
There is probably no small number of guys watching the show for the first time, just to get to see the woman who played Sarah Connor take off her clothes. The joke is on them: Lena Headey was not naked for the scene.
The several minutes of the Game of Thrones finale that featured a naked, shorn Queen Cersei walking through Kings’ Landing toward her castle home has been given the title The Walk of Shame. It is a scene that book-readers were already expecting. Lena Headey pulled it of flawlessly — with help from another very talented actress
But the whole scene ran into some difficulty in filming.
First of all, the scene ended up costing $200,000 to film due to all the extra security involved. But security was not even the toughest part.
There was a bit of difficulty getting approval for filming the scene in the Dubrovnik, Croatia location. The Church of St. Nicholas, where other scenes were already shot, would only allow the location to be used if Headey did not disrobe in the church itself. So a fake religious set had to be built to accommodate their wishes.
Lena Headey said that she opted to not walk naked herself so she could better focus on the emotional content of the scene, rather than on her own feelings of being naked in front of a crew.
Lena Headey also has extensive tattooing, which can certainly be covered for such a scene, but this way they didn’t have to do that, either.
Actress Rebecca Van Cleave, who stood in as body double for Lena Headey in the Walk of Shame scene, told Entertainment Weekly that shooting the scene was actually quite thrilling for her, professionally.
“It was one of the scariest, most wonderful, most gratifying experiences I could have imagined,” Van Cleave said of working with Lena Headey on the scene. “I never in a million years would have thought I would be in Dubrovnik surrounded by hundreds of extras and crew members throwing food at me, but it was amazing.”
“It was actually the most comfortable casting I’ve ever had, considering,” Van Cleave says. “It’s definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but also the best experience of my life,” she says. “And I hope the next thing I do will have my head in it!”
LENA HEADEY TE AMO.
— Blanca Niehaus (@blancagibson) June 19, 2015