Jason Momoa Shuts Down NY Times Interviewer When Asked if He Regrets Doing Game of Thrones Rape Scenes
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Jason Momoa shut down a question from New York Times’ David Marchese, calling it “icky” and admitting it left a “bad feeling” in his stomach.
“I don’t know how much you followed any of this, but ‘Game of Thrones’ inspired a lot of discussion about its depiction of scenes of sexual assault and its treatment of women generally,” Marchese asked, partially referencing scenes between Momoa’s character Khal Drogo and his once-reluctant wife Daenerys Targaryen, portrayed by Emilia Clarke.
“Do you think differently today about those scenes? Would you do one now? Do you have any regrets? Those types of scenes can seem as if they belong to an older cultural moment.”
Momoa first said that it was important for him to depict Drogo’s “style,” explaining that he was playing a character largely reminiscent of Genghis Khan.
“It was a really, really, really hard thing to do. But my job was to play something like that, and it’s not a nice thing, and it’s what that character was,” he added. “It’s not my job to go, ‘Would I not do it?’ I’ve never really been questioned about ‘Do you regret playing a role?’ We’ll put it this way: I already did it. Not doing it again.”
The scenes between Drogo and Targaryen were largely criticized by fans of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, the series the HBO show was based on, as the two characters were together consensually in the book but not in the TV adaption.
Before ending the interview, Momoa brought up the question again, saying that it “left a bad feeling in my stomach.”
“When you brought up ‘Game of Thrones,’ you brought up stuff about what’s happening with my character and would I do it again. I was bummed when you asked me that,” he said.
“It just feels icky — putting it upon me to remove something. As if an actor even had the choice to do that. We’re not really allowed to do anything. There are producers, there are writers, there are directors, and you don’t get to come in and be like, ‘I’m not going do that because this isn’t kosher right now and not right in the political climate.’ That never happens. So it’s a question that feels icky. I just wanted you to know that.”
Despite first telling Marchese that the rape scenes were a “really, really, really hard thing” for him to do, Momoa had previously joked about his experience playing Drogo in a 2011 interview, saying that he loves acting in science-fiction roles because he can “get away with” raping “beautiful women.”
“But as far as sci-fi and fantasy, I love that genre because there are so many things you can do, like rip someone’s tongue out of their throat and get away with it and rape beautiful women,” he told a laughing crowd while co-star Lena Headey looked rather embarrassed.
He later touched on the subject again during an interview with the New York Post, saying, “Yeah, I’m raping Emillia. I love her, but I’m hurting her and she’s crying. We could have made it longer, but you get the idea. I’m not a rapist. I prefer my women to enjoy sex.”
