Maisie Williams on Game of Thrones: “It’s time to wrap this up”

Earlier this week, Maisie Williams (Arya Stark), made headlines for her reaction to the scripts for Season 7. “Start preparing yourselves now,” she warned, before reconsidering. “Scratch that, nothing will prepare you for this.”

Williams might be prepared for Season 7, but she wasn’t prepared to finally break through on the Emmy front. Speaking to Variety on her Supporting Actress nod for her work on Season 6. When she heard about it, the experience was “mindblowing.”

"…it’s not something that happens all the time because I won’t be young forever, so it means an awful lot to be 19 years old. And there will be people younger than me who have been nominated and younger people than me that have won — it’s not about that … just to be a part of young actors being acknowledged is very special."

Talking about her experience in Season 6, the blind contacts come up again as probably the hardest part of filming. (Williams has been very open about how hard they were to work in both before and during last season.) She also praises Faye Marsay as a sparring partner in all her fight scenes, as she has done all year. One topic that does come up that she hasn’t discussed much is Arya’s final scene in the finale. You know the one: where she kills Walder Frey after serving him his own dead sons baked into a pie.)

"Everyone, from all departments, said, “you have got the best kill of any kill ever. I don’t think there’s a single person in the world that won’t be thrilled that Walder Frey is gone,” so it felt very, very good. It was such a fun day – so many things just went so well with that scene. There’s this one take where we did a close-up and I slit his throat and he’s bleeding out and I got this perfect little speck of blood just above my collarbone on my neck…. And Fabian [Wagner, the show’s director of photography], the way he lit me in that scene, I was so stoic and cool – a lot of things went really right and it got a great reaction."

Williams also address whether audiences should be cheering on Arya or worried going into next season. She borrowed a sentiment from Kit Harington, who talked about Jon Snow snapping and beating Ramsay Bolton to a pulp.

"…it’s sad when our heroes take it too far and they don’t just do their job, they actually enjoy it and you see a twisted spark behind the eyes. It’s worrying. I think it’s worrying because I care about this little girl, and she is still a little girl."

As for Season 7, Williams says it would be nice to have Arya go home to a Stark family reunion. (Although she doesn’t think Jon would have any idea what to do with Arya now.) “But I just want her to see Melisandre or Cersei and not be dead at the end of it. To cross another big name off the list.” And as for the longer wait for the shorter season:

"Good things must come to an end or they’re not good anymore. It doesn’t last forever and we’ve done what we came to do, it’s time to wrap this up, and it will have the ending it was always supposed to have, and that’s very special."

A surprisingly positive note considering what must be coming at the end of this coming season. The wait isn’t getting any shorter guys.