Maisie Williams and her surprise in Game of Thrones: “I always thought Arya was a lesbian”

But why wasn’t Arya Stark a lesbian? For years, this is where Maisie Williams has been thinking about her character game of Thrones. The HBO fiction, which became in eight seasons the most awarded series in history with 59 Emmys on the trophy case, it was a hit with critics and global audiences.

Williams, who had already expressed some resentment towards her character, thought that Arya had always been attracted to women. However, everything has changed, according to the actress Teen Vogue– with a situation in the last season. I was talking the sex scene between Arya and her friend Gendry (Joe Dempsie) in the eighth and final season of the show.

“I think the first time I was surprised by Arya was last season, when she slept with Gendry,” Williams said. “I thought she was weird… do you explain? To me she was a lesbianso yeah, it was really a surprise. “

warrior and nonconformist

The daughter of Ned Stark and Catelyn, one of the five children of the Starks, is one of the great characters in the series and novels by George RR Martin. He appeared in 59 of the 73 episodes of the HBO adaptationand has become one of the most loved profiles by fans and viewers.

Thanks to her warlike and nonconformist attitude and her great survival skills, she ended up maturing over the seasons, going from girl to powerful assassin and leader. Interestingly, he had no romantic partners or interests, driven by a desire for revenge on those who have offended his family and friends, the Lannisters. This led Maisie Williams to think she was a lesbian.

friend, ally and lover

But that all changed in the eighth season, he said, with the little romance with one of his best friends and allies, Gendry Baratheon. The actress was shocked by the sequence, since like many other fans of game of Throneshe believed that Arya could be some kind of character queer. In fact, already at the time, the sequence in question generated a lot of controversy on social media.

In 2019 Williams had already told about it Weekly entertainment That I thought the scene in the script was a “joke” of the showrunner David Benioff and Dan Weiss. “I remember we were reading the script and when this scene came out I thought, ‘Are we really going to do this? I have to go to the gym …'”

And then Williams revealed that Arya caused “a certain resentment” in him, a feeling related to his adolescence, given that he was only 12 in 2009, when he was cast for the character.

the gaze of others

“I think when I started becoming a woman, I resented Arya because I couldn’t express who I was becoming,” Williams explained. “And then also my body was bothering me because it did not correspond – at least for me – to all the comments that the success of the series has unleashed in the world, especially with the explosion of social networks.

In taking stock of his time in fiction, Williams summarizes: “I see it with love and with great pride. But why would he want to make me feel sad about the greatest thing that ever happened to me?

“I don’t want to associate it with feelings of pain … I immediately realized that it was more related to the shame of being in something so beautiful that it would never be repeated … When really, the question that could be asked at that moment was: And now, what do I want to do?

CJL