Maisie Williams spoke to GQ UK about her complicated feelings when it comes to missing “Game of Thrones,” where she played the strong-willed and tomboyish Arya Stark for all eight seasons of the HBO fantasy blockbuster. When asked what part of the show she misses the most, Williams went silent and then answered, “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.”
Williams also spoke about resenting Arya as she came of age as a woman herself during the show. Arya’s coming-of-age experience stood in direct contrast to Williams’ own experience, none more so than in the terms of Arya’s boyish physicality. Williams said a tension was created between the world expecting her to look and act like her character and what her own form of self-expression looked like in the real world.
“I think that when I started becoming a woman, I resented Arya because I couldn’t express who I was becoming,” Williams said. “And then I also resented my body, because it wasn’t aligned with the piece of me that the world celebrated.”
Williams reprised the role of Arya for the Warner Bros.-produced video game “MultiVersus,” lending her voice to the character. Would she reprise Arya again in a live-action capacity? “I’m not saying it would never happen, but I’m also not saying it in this interview so that everyone goes…‘The spin-off! It’s coming!’ Because it’s not.”
“It has to be the right time and the right people,” Williams added about playing Arya again. “It has to be right in the context of all the other spin-offs and the universe of ‘Game of Thrones.’ It has to be the right time for me.”
Head over to GQ UK to read Williams’ latest profile in its entirety.
