Maisie Williams has a complicated relationship with her Game of Thrones character.
The actress starred as the iron-willed and tomboyish Arya Stark for all eight seasons of the HBO fantasy juggernaut, joining the cast at the age of 12. Now she has opened up about her experience growing up on set, explaining how fan perception of Arya affected her relationship with her body.
The revelation came after she was given a bra in the GoT costumes trailer, Williams recalled in a new interview with GQ UK published Tuesday. “I think that when I started becoming a woman, I resented Arya because I couldn’t express who I was becoming,” she said. “And then I also resented my body, because it wasn’t aligned with the piece of me that the world celebrated.”
Mike Marsland/WireImage Maisie Williams
Williams also had a ruminative response when asked about what part of the show she misses the most, answering, “Can I say none of it?”
“I don’t think it’s healthy [to miss it], because I loved it,” Williams said. “I look at it so fondly, and I look at it with such pride. But why would I want to make myself feel sad about the greatest thing that ever happened to me? I don’t want to associate that with feelings of pain.”
The actress has spoken candidly about how Arya has negatively impacted her body image before, recounting an experience in which a strap was placed across her chest during a 2019 interview with Vogue.
Helen Sloan/HBO Maisie Williams as Arya Stark in ‘Game of Thrones’
“Around season 2 or 3, my body started to mature and I started to become a woman,” Williams said. “But Arya was still very much trying to be disguised as a boy. I had really short hair and they’d constantly cover me in dirt and shade my nose so it looked really broad and I looked really manly. They’d also put this strap across my chest to flatten any growth that had started. I don’t know, that just felt horrible for six months of the year, and I felt kind of ashamed for a while.”
Williams added that it was “nice to look more feminine” and “embrace the body I have” after the series wrapped.
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