Maisie Williams Reveals how Game of Thrones Affected Her Body Image

Kristine Cannon

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Among other accomplishments and projects, Maisie Williams will always be remembered for her powerful portrayal of Arya Stark, the slayer of the Night King, on the now-defunct Game of Thrones. The character of Arya as we know it and have seen it on screen is quite simply one badass teen, but Williams felt anything but during certain parts of filming the hit HBO show. So much so, she reveals to Vogue during Fashion Week that it took a toll on her self-confidence and body image.

“Around Season 2 or 3, my body started to mature, and I started to become a woman,” Williams tells the publication. “But Arya was still very much trying to be disguised as a boy.” She continues to say that as the wardrobe and makeup department made her look less feminine, covering her in dirt, she felt ashamed. ““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” she said.

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“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 admits.

But that wasn’t the only uncomfortable part of filming for the actress. Remember Episode 2 of Season 8? Arya’s sex scene? Yep, that was a daunting scene for Williams. She even thought it was a prank at first, but when writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss confirmed it, her response was simply, “Oh, f*ck.”

“Whatever you do, you have to skip to this episode, this scene first,” GoT co-star Sophie Turner told Williams at the time. For a while, Williams says it was “practically all [she] knew about the entire season.”

Now that Game of Thrones is behind her, Maisie is keeping herself plenty busy with her startup, Daisy, “the playground for creative collaboration” for creatives to share their work and find collaborators.

“When I was shooting, Dom [Santry, Daisy co-founder] and I would have to FaceTime at 11 p.m. So many huge decisions were made over FaceTime. When I finished the show, I went straight to the office, every day, until we launched our MVP,” Williams tells AngelList Blog. “I’ve talked to people who are so passionate and excited about what we’re doing with Daisie that I realize, halfway through, I’ve hardly heard a single thing they’ve said. But I can feel their passion for what we’re building. It shows me how much some people care.”

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