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Game of Thrones star Bella Ramsey sat on film sets solving maths problems as she juggled school with her blossoming acting career.
The 15-year-old, who enchanted audiences with her fearless portrayal of Lyanna Mormont in HBO’s gargantuan series, has opened up about her struggle with balancing her education with being catapulted into the public eye at such a young age.
Fresh from shooting battle scenes, still covered in blood and gore, Bella would squeeze in study sessions through the online school platform Interhigh.
The actress would brave English comprehension between filming takes of that giant white walker crushing her character to death or flying a broomstick as Mildred Hubble in CBBC’s The Worst Witch.
“Maths is kind of my favourite. I would do maths problems everyday,” she said as she talked about how flexible education systems are “always an option” for those who similarly jarred with traditional schools.
Bella told the Standard that she left school after feeling like “everyone was put in a box”.
“There was no room for personalisation,” she added. “In acting, I like it because every take, I try to make it a little bit different.”
In fact, Bella said she tends to gravitate away from anything repetitive, which perhaps fed into her discord with mainstream schooling.
When she has a spare moment outside her hectic filming days, the 15-year-old flits between cooking, painting, playing music and football.
Even when it comes to baking, she said: “I always try to make something new. I just don’t like repeating things.”
Bella was in Year 6 when she was cast in Game of Thrones – her first ever onscreen acting role – but trouble at school soon followed as she had to keep her casting a secret.
“Everyone was intrigued by what I was doing and what it was all about,” she said. “But I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone yet, especially because Lyanna was a new character.
“Other people started taking it the wrong way. I tried to explain that I had to sign something and that I wasn’t just being difficult – I just wasn’t allowed to say.”
But then everyone found out. So before she began shooting the series in Year 7, the starlet said she suddenly became “popular for all the wrong reasons.”
“I wasn’t popular in Year 7 at all,” she added. “I just didn’t care about social expectations or anything. I was just myself.
“I was hoping that it could just carry on and I was wanting it to just not affect anything at school but it really did in terms of both education and friendships.”
Asked how she made the decision to move into homeschooling, Bella said “a lot of little things built up” but the final straw was a bad experience with a teacher.
She was in a music lesson learning the trumpet and all her classmates were way ahead of her due to the school she had missed while filming.
“The teacher sort of humiliated me about it,” she said. “That was what tipped it and so the next day I didn’t go back”
After trying to study through traditional home study systems, Bella soon enrolled in Interhigh, an online school which provides scheduled classes and timetables over videolink.
The students can see the teacher, but not each other and Bella said she enjoys learning from the safety of her home without unruly distractions.
“It is incredibly flexible, incredibly accommodating yet it has given me structure still, which I fell I very much need,” she said.
“I love it and recommend it to everyone. I think it allows people to be who they truly are and it leaves room for people to do the non-academic things they love.”
Bella said the students still bond with each other, through chats outside of school, share their social media and even meet up in person.
If the 15-year-old misses a scheduled class during filming, Interhigh records the lesson so she can always catch up
On some sets she found it much harder to focus on school work, especially filming The Worst Witch.
“I was the main character and I was full on and it was tiring and hard work and long hours. But I also just really want to learn and do school too and CBBC are very strict with tutoring so that helped us really want to do it.”
Next up is GCSEs but Bella is keeping an open mind about how work will coincide with exams. This year, she will star in the Judy Garland biopic with Renee Zellwegger and the WWII drama, Resistance with Jesse Eisenberg.
“I’m intending to do my GCSES whenever the time works and you do not have to be 16 years old and do them. Like if a job clashes with my GCSEs then I will choose the job.”
To others who do not feel they fit with mainstream education, Bella really encourages them to consider systems like Interhigh.
“There are options,” she said. “I stopped school mainly because I wasn’t enjoying it but work then coincided with that.”
“So people who are struggling with it know that there can be a different choice.“
