Warning: This post contains nudity.
Pop Goes The News — Those Game of Thrones fans who complained about the disparity between female nudity and male nudity on the series were thrown a bone (so to speak) during the May 22 episode.
Viewers got a close-up shot of a flaccid uncircumcised penis and a pair of testicles during a scene in which a stage actor portraying Joffrey Baratheon discovered he has genital warts.
The foreskin-sheathed penis and shorn scrotum presumably belonged to actor Rob Callender. (If they were attached to a body double, Callender is not saying — he hasn’t tweeted about his Game of Thrones, um, part.)
So what do we know about the young man whose junk quickly became a topic of conversation? Not much.
Callender — exact age unknown — is a graduate of London’s Guildhall School of Music & Drama and earned some acclaim for playing Guy Bennett in the play Another Country in 2014.
In an interview with gay magazine Attitude, Callender recalled the sexual experimentation at his boarding school, Winchester College.
“If you’re in a society of entirely boys and you only have free time when you’ve finished your homework and then you’re in a boarding house with 50 other boys, of course quite a lot of that is going to happen,” he said.
“But then it was never spoken about and I think for people who are just experimenting, that is not a dangerous thing.”
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Callender has also had a handful of small TV roles and appeared in this year’s box office flop Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
Passionate about environmental issues, he is currently preparing to direct a film about climate change.
Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke, who has bared all several times as Daenerys Targaryen, applauded the male full-frontal nudity.
“Total equality,” she said on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. “I did it. Why can’t the boys do it?”
Previously, Clarke shouted “free the penis” on various talk shows while campaigning for equal nudity on GoT.
The hit series regularly shows females — cast members and extras — fully nude and occasionally shows bare male butts. Penises, though, have been few and far between — and often not even real. (Hodor actor Kristian Nairn has said he wore a prosthetic for his full-frontal scene.)
Calling the May 22 episode’s penis scene “a cop out,” The Telegraph described “the briefest of glimpses of male genitals amid near-weekly female nudity.
“It was only for a second or two but it took up the whole screen – both penis and testicles. One small flash for man, one giant leap for equality. Or is it?”
On Twitter, GoT fans had their say.
https://twitter.com/the_lil_miss/status/735502652096712704
https://twitter.com/DarkDaeneryss/status/734796742869159936
https://twitter.com/odamnwolf/status/734965953629442048
https://twitter.com/aisfromspace/status/734951601094418432
https://twitter.com/ashleysanchxz/status/734554504310456321
https://twitter.com/jessicica14/status/734598077403762689
https://twitter.com/jessicica14/status/734598280814985216
At Fusion, reporters Katie McDonough, Tahirah Hairston and Kelsey McKinney shared their thoughts on the unexpected penis scene.
“I did not like it,” McDonough opined. “They’re like, OK, we’ll give you male full-frontal but it will be up close and it’ll be about genital warts, you’re welcome.”
McKinney added: “My review of the penis shot: Why”
Hairston approved. “I like that GoT changed the gaze of objectification and showed a meaningless penis just because they could,” she said. “I wouldn’t even call it a ‘female gaze’ because it wasn’t shot with the intent of sexually pleasing women.”
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At Marie Claire, writer Jessica Bosco erroneously declared that “after five (and a half) seasons this is the first time the show has featured full-frontal male nudity (Hodor’s prosthetics not included).”
In fact, a few presumably real penises have popped up on GoT during its run.
In the first season of the show, actor Simon Lowe’s character was stripped naked after trying to poison Daenerys.
Alfie Allen, who plays Theon Greyjoy, went full-frontal in a sex scene in season one.
In the fourth season, actor Will Tudor, as Olyvar, walks naked towards the camera with his willy flopping.
And in the fifth season finale, a man in the crowd flashes his junk at Cersei Lannister during her walk of atonement. (According to a 2014 casting call for the flasher role — seeking someone with “no genital abnormalities or piercings” — the actor was paid about $1,700 CAD and got an expenses-paid trip to Croatia.)
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