Actress who plays one of Littlefinger’s prostitutes thanks Game of Thrones for a second chance

It has been striking, these last few seasons, how much Game of Thrones has cut down on what fans and critics once dubbed “sexposition,” the practice of putting naked bodies into scenes to entertain the audience while other character talk about the plot. Although the show still has nudity, it’s been more purposeful of late (e.g. neither Cersei’s walk nor Daenerys’ emergence from the Dothraki hut were supposed to be titillating), to the point that when “The Door” featured both a gratuitous cock moment followed by a gratuitous boobs moment, it was actually kind of startling.

And yet the show’s reputation precedes it. This week we had a story about HBO having to go after PornHub over nude scenes from Game of Thrones showing up there. Now The Daily Mail comes along with another story based on the idea that the show is no more than a hive of scum and villainy. However, this one is a “feel good” story about Josephine Gillan, an actress who claims that getting a part playing one of Littlefinger’s prostitutes has been the boost to her career she needed to get her out of a terrible situation where she saw prostitution as her only viable occupation.

The Daily Mail is heavy on the violent and gory details of her life before landing a lucky break when she saw an advert for work on an adult actress website. It was for Game of Thrones.

"They wrote back that they wanted me and I was thrilled because it was an amazing opportunity to do some proper acting. But I had no idea how much it would change my life."

But by getting put on a mainstream show (albeit one where she plays a sex worker, and spends most of her time on camera naked), Gillan got a huge resume boost. She also shed some light on the filming of the sex scenes themselves.

"People ask me all the time if we are at it for real and I reply, “Are dragons or zombies real?” The reality is that the male actors are so uncomfortable doing sex scenes that I can usually feel them shaking nervously under me. I think they suffer from performance anxiety, because they are almost naked and there are usually about 30 crew members on set."

Gillan’s been lucky in another way—unlike some of her costars, her part is so small that she hasn’t been killed off yet. The show has now cast her in some fashion every season since she arrived in King’s Landing and Littlefinger’s House of Ill Repute in Season 2, and she says she’s booked for Season 7. And at 27 years old, she’s got a budding film career—the mainstream kind, acting in indie and horror films, where she finally gets to keep her clothes on. Who says that there are no happy endings in Westeros?