Taboo star Oona Chaplin on TV's incest obsession: 'There's very few things that have remained taboo'

"I haven't tried it... yet!": Taboo star Oona Chaplin CREDIT: MATT WINKELMEYER/GETTY IMAGES

•  Adam White 

18 JANUARY 2017 • 10:59AM

Actress Oona Chaplin has bounced from one enormous TV hit to another, as Robb Stark's doomed wife Talisa on Game of Thrones and now as haunted, fragile Zilpha on the Tom Hardy smash Taboo. But one major theme linking both series happens to be incest, and Chaplin has finally broken her silence about the very last taboo.

Asked about the hinted incest between Zilpha and her on-screen half-brother, Hardy's James Delaney, and the popularity of incest themes in TV drama, Chaplin expressed that it might be down to modern audiences being generally unshockable when it comes to sex.

Chaplin as the potentially-incestuous Zilpha Geary on Taboo CREDIT: FX/ROBERT VIGLASKY

"There's a sexual libertarianism right now," she told Vanity Fair. "Girls are walking around with their asses hanging out, and guys are just as much. Sex has become a very public-display type of thing, so there's very few things that have remained taboo. Where does the taboo lie now? I think it's in incest.

"Until we make it normal that brothers and sisters can f---," she continued. "I think that'll still be the only interesting aspect of sex that remains. Maybe. I don't know.

"I've never tried it... yet!", she joked.

Incestuous twins Jaime and Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones, as played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Lena Headey CREDIT: HELEN SLOAN/HBO

While the incestuous themes of Taboo are shocking, little compares to Chaplin's previous series.

Game of Thrones heroine Daenerys Targaryen is a product of incest herself, the House Targaryen long having indulged in incest in order to keep their bloodline 'pure'. Similarly, Cersei Lannister has been engaged in an illicit romance with her twin brother Ser Jaime since they were young. The affair has produced three children, who are all each other's siblings as well as their own cousins.

Shows including Boardwalk Empire, American Horror Story and Animal Kingdom have all dipped into the Oedipal pool in recent years, while the BBC soap EastEnders last year saw secret half-siblings embarking on a brief flirtation.

Tom Hardy as James Delaney in Taboo CREDIT: ROBERT VIGLASKY 

As for Taboo, there has been speculation that a mysterious third sibling related to James and Zilpha, much younger than both of them, could in fact be their secret child.

Chaplin previously told TV Guide (potentially jokingly) that her main objective as one of the stars of the series is to get people rooting for the half-siblings to wind up as a couple.

"That's my objective. And I think that was a common objective of the team, so if people want a brother and a sister to get it on like there's no tomorrow, then we won."