Emilia Clarke Says She 'Broke A Rib' Filming An NSFW Scene With Three Men For Her New Show

Emilia Clarke has opened up about how a sex scene she filmed ended with her “breaking a rib,” after a long day on set that clearly took a toll.

The Game of Thrones actor is back on TV again, but this time she’s stepping into a very different world with a new spy thriller series called Ponies.

The show takes place during the Cold War in the 1970s and follows Clarke as Bea, a widowed secretary who ends up becoming a CIA operative at the American embassy in Moscow, Russia. Alongside her colleague Twila (Haley Lu Richardson), the two women start digging into the mysterious deaths of their husbands and quickly realize there is a lot more going on than anyone is saying out loud.

For Clarke’s character Bea, the job comes with some risky choices, including getting physically close to powerful men connected to the KGB.

After the show premiered on Peacock on January 15, Clarke and Richardson spoke with TheWrap in an interview where Clarke, now 39, explained exactly how the injury happened during filming.

"Three men, in a number of hours," Clarke said while describing one intense day on set. "Just keep bringing it — I'm going to sit on this thing, you're going to bring them in, we're going to pretend to have sex. I broke a rib that day."

Emilia Clarke portrays a widower, Bea, in the TV series Peacock

Richardson backed her up right away and confirmed Clarke wasn’t exaggerating about what happened.

Confirming her story, Richardson added: "She really did. She's such a tiny little sensitive body, meant she broke a rib."

Richardson also explained that she was still in hair and makeup while Clarke filmed the scene, but she watched the aftermath play out once the shoot wrapped and the actors came back.

She said: "I was like 'So how was it?' They were like 'Yeah! (panting)."

Clarke said the situation got even more awkward when she had to explain the injury to a doctor later on, because there wasn’t really a normal way to describe it.

She admitted: "Sex! Times three!"

Thankfully, Clarke made it clear that it wasn’t as serious as it sounded, and when Richardson checked in on her, Clarke explained the rib didn’t fully snap.

She said: "It didn't like, fully break, it just popped out a little bit."

The Me Before You star has also spoken in the past about how her career nearly changed forever after a major health crisis more than a decade ago, which left her questioning what her future would look like.

Richardson confirmed Clarke's story Kristina Bumphrey/Variety via Getty Images

In 2024, Clarke spoke to the Big Issue and reflected on the two life-threatening brain hemorrhages she suffered in 2011 and 2013 while she was filming Game of Thrones.

She previously described experiencing “excruciating pain,” along with repeated vomiting, while also fighting to stay conscious and keep control of her thoughts as everything happened.

"When you have a brain injury, because it alters your sense of self on such a dramatic level, all of the insecurities you have going into the workplace quadruple overnight," Clarke told the publication.

"The first fear we all had was: 'Oh my God, am I going to get fired? Am I going to get fired because they think I'm not capable of completing the job?'"

She explained that when she returned to work after the first brain injury, she felt scared that something could go wrong again while she was filming, and she worried she might not survive it.

Clarke said she remembers thinking: "Well, if I'm going to die, I better die on live TV."