Maisie Williams (Arya) Talks Fighting The Waif
By Ani Bundel
WARNING! THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FROM LAST NIGHT’S EPISODE.
I will kill all the spoilers.
Last night’s episode was filled with battles large and small. In Meereen, the Masters laid siege from the water, while in Riverrun, Jaime Lannister laid siege from land. The Hound and the Mountain both went hand-to-hand combat on their foes. But the fight that everyone is talking about this morning is Arya Stark’s final showdown with her arch nemesis among the Faceless Men, the Waif.
Maisie Williams (Arya) sat down with Entertainment Weekly and discussed their Braavosi Street Brawl. Apparently, she found training with Faye Marasay (who plays the Waif) to be a great way to learn to get better at stage combat.
"…we spurred each other on in training. I had a bit of pride. I’ve done some sword-fighting before. But she had to be better than me and every time she’d be getting [the fighting] right and I’d be getting it wrong. I’d be like, “Hang on, I’m going to lose, but I still need to look like I’m getting better.” And every time I was doing well she’d be like, “Yeah, but I have to look the best.” So it was the healthy way to train."
She also discussed filming that plunge into the canal last week, which she in Northern Ireland not far from where the footage on the Iron Islands was shot. As was reported at the time, much of the filming involved her jumping in and out of the water over and over.
"I had been to a music festival so I hadn’t slept the whole weekend. Then I was jumping in the Irish sea. It was a totally manic day. We did a million different takes. We wanted it to be real frantic and panicked…She ends peoples’ lives like there’s no tomorrow, but when it’s finally happening to her she’s petrified. She’s petrified of dying. She’s got so much more to do."
As for whether Arya ever thought she could really be a Faceless Man, Williams says no. She never really believed she could do it, but she certainly *tried.*
"[T]here’s a glimpse in the middle of it where the stress came off her and she found this moment like … like when people mediate and think of nothing. Where she was like, “Oh, this is cool.” But what’s totally shaped her is the whole reason why she’s here…She can’t think like how they want her to because the whole reason she’s there is that she wants to go back."
That also matters when it comes to the Game of Thrones players and why Arya doesn’t join them when Lady Crane suggests it. Williams compares it a bit to the reality show trope: “I’m not here to make friends.” “I’m not here to dance around and play in your play. It sounds amazing. But I have bigger things that I can’t tell you that I’m going to do instead.”
Williams also commented on the irony of Arya telling Lady Crane that, were she in a play, she probably couldn’t remember all her lines. Oddly enough this is the same that she told her agent back when he suggested she become an actress back when she was 10 years old. “It’s so weird saying that (now) because that’s literally my job.” But she thinks that the meta experience of doing a play of the show within the show just proves how singular Game of Thrones is. “You wouldn’t see that on any other show.” Truth.