Maisie Williams ‘resented’ Arya in Game of Thrones when she reached puberty
‘I couldn’t express who I was becoming,’ said the actor
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Your support makes all the difference.Maisie Williams has reflected on starring in Game of Thrones while going through puberty.
The actor, who is now 24, was cast in the HBO fantasy epic a few months after her 12th birthday, in 2009. She spent the entirety of her teenage years on the show, which ended in 2019.
In a new interview, Williams has recalled the day she was first handed a bra in the Game of Thrones costume trailer.
Talking about how that moment represented a distancing from the way people saw Arya Stark – as a scrappy fighter more into swords than dresses – she told GQ Style: “I think that when I started becoming a woman, I resented Arya because I couldn’t express who I was becoming.
“And then I also resented my body, because it wasn’t aligned with the piece of me that the world celebrated.”
Williams previously told Rolling Stone in 2017: “At 12, I was fearless and didn’t care, so I really enjoyed it. But then, as each season passed, the pressure built and it became a little destructive.
“Everyone goes through that dip in confidence. That also came with puberty. It all fizzled out a bit, and I lost my confidence, and now I’m slowly starting to get it back again.”
She said: “But the first two years were weird. I was having the time of my life, but I look back and I think I wasn’t really very happy because I didn’t have many friends. I had left school and I was working a lot and it was a strange time.”
Williams can next be seen in Pistol, a six-part series from Danny Boyle that follows Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones and the band’s rise to prominence and notoriety.
It premieres on Disney Plus in May.
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