Lena Heady dismisses claims that controversial 'GoT' scene was a rape

LOS ANGELES, April 8 (UPI) -- Game of Thrones star Lena Heady opened up about one of the show's most controversial scenes from last season in which her character Queen Cersei Lanister is seemingly forced into a sexual encounter with her brother and longtime lover Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau).

In the scene, Jamie pushes himself onto his sister as their both mourn the death of their first child, King Joffrey Baratheon. At first Cersei resists with a "Stop, it's not right," but Jaimie responds: "I don't care."

"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 Entertainment Weekly on the Thrones set in Dubrovnik.

"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."

In the book, George R.R. Martin's A Storm of Swords, the scene is depicted as a consesual encounter between the lovers, but the HBO series showed a more ambiguous portrayal.

Coster-Waldau has said that it "was definitely not the intention" to portray a rape. The episode's director Alex Graves has also stated the encounter was ultimately consensual.

"It becomes consensual by the end, because anything for them ultimately results in a turn-on, especially a power struggle," Graves told HitFix last April, adding "That's one of my favorite scenes I've ever done."