Do you guys remember that Game of Thrones scene when Jaime Lannister forces himself on Cersei. The scene that some called "rape-cest" left audiences uncomfortable, especially since Cersei is Jamie's sister. The HBO show is not shy about depicting barbarism but that specific scene was the most controversial in series history.
Now stars Lena Headey (Queen Cersei Lannister) and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jamie Lannister) are opening up on their take on season four’s explicit sex scene that is depicted as more consensual in George R.R. Martin’s book A Storm of Swords.
“It’s that terrible thing as a women talking about something as horrendous as rape and dismissing it, which I’m not. But we never discussed it as that,” Headey told EW. “It was a woman in grief for her dead child, and the father of the child—who happens to be her brother—who never really acknowledged the children is standing with her. We’ve all experienced grief. There’s a moment of wanting to fill a void, and that is often very visceral, physical. That, for me, is where she was at. There was an emotional block, and [her brother] was just a bit of a drug for her.”
One critic called it “the most screwed up sex scene” in TV history but Coster-Waldau says the scene was never meant to depict a rape.
“Most people I spoke to got from the scene what we were trying to show—a very complicated relationship, and two people in desperate need for each other. All these emotions going through them, it was never intended to be something where he forced—it wasn’t a rape, and it was never intended to be. But it’s one of those things where you can’t [publicly] say ‘it wasn’t rape,’ because then everybody goes, ‘How can you say it wasn’t rape?!’ But that was definitely not the intention.”
He thought people would be mad at the scene for different reasons.
“Whatever people get from it, they get from it. But it did surprise me. I thought the outrage would be about that they were having sex in front of their dead son.”
Coster-Waldau thinks fans were let down by the progress his character made morally since season one, including his promising relationship with Brienne.
“People had almost a sense of betrayal,” he said. “I think people had invested in the Jaime and Brienne storyline. She brought out the best in him, and he helped her and saved her. And then he goes and wants to have sex with his evil sister. Everything he does makes sense—Jaime keeps saying, ‘I have to get back.’ He says to Brienne, ‘We don’t get to chose who we love.’ He loves his sister. So I think there was a sense of betrayal, that ‘that’s not supposed to happen.’”
Overall, the actor doesn't have regrets. “It was a great scene to do,” he says.
[via Entertainment Weekly]
