Arya Stark mostly spent Game of Thrones season 7 reuniting with her family, although she got in a few (dozen) murders while she was at it; this is Arya we’re talking about. What’s in store for her for season 8? Actress Maisie Williams talked to The Guardian about it, and while she didn’t give specifics, she did say that the final six episodes were “quite big for me. I had a lot more to do.”
But lest fans read too much into that, she clarified: “Mainly because there’s just less characters now, so everyone’s got more to do.” Good save, Williams.
It’s been a few months since Williams finished filming on the final season of Game of Thrones, and while she’s still in regular contact with cast and crew members, some of whom Williams says are still mourning the end of this period of their lives, she’s moving on. “I’ve had my fingernails painted for three weeks,” she laughed. “That’s how far out of the show I am. It really feels like a long time ago.”
“I got to the end and I didn’t want more,” she continued. “I had exhausted every possible piece of Arya.” That said, Thrones is still “very much a part of life,” and probably will be until long after the finale airs. There’s just no forgetting the youngest Stark sister.
But back to that ending…Williams was one of the last cast members to wrap on season 8, and she describes her final scene as “beautiful.”
"I ended on the perfect scene. I was alone –- shocker! Arya’s always bloody alone. But I was alone and I had watched a lot of other people wrap. I knew the drill, I had seen the tears and heard the speeches."
Naturally, Williams gave her own speech. “It wasn’t something I planned, but in that moment I realized what the show meant to me,” she said. After that, it was off to her trailer for some alone time before joining the cast and crew for a fancy meal. “And drank a lot of sake.”
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As for what’s next, Williams is starring as housebound teenager Caroline in a limited run play at the Hampstead Theater in London starting later this month: I and You. “Caroline has a very quick wit and an almost pessimistic view of the world, which she’s built from experience, and has all the facts to back it up,” Williams said. “Reading the script was like reading texts on my phone from when I was at school. What’s exciting about it is how much it resonated with me as a young human in the world today.”
Williams herself had a trying teenage experience, having taken off school to make Game of Thrones when she was young and then coming back to find that her peers were often hostile to her. “Going through that and trying to juggle other people’s opinions on who you are and how you should act, that’s difficult, just because you’re desperately trying to find your own identity,” she said. “Whether you’re famous at 15 or not, you’re still confused as to who you are.”
Having done a lot of growing up since then, Williams can now put those experiences in perspective, although she admits that the funk she got into around that time still lingers. “I think I’m still clearing it,” she laughed.
"I don’t want to excuse anyone’s behaviour. But being 15 and feeling threatened by someone who’s successful, that seems like quite a human thing. When I look back, I just think it could have literally been anyone. It just so happened that I was the one who got the success."
At 21, Williams still has her whole life ahead of her, and is planning to do a ton with it. After I and You, Williams will star as Wolfsbane in The New Mutants, an horror-themed X-Men spinoff. Then there’s a movie about rival speakeasies in World War II-era Malta, plus work on her social networking app Daisie. Whatever baggage Williams is carrying over from her adolescence, it looks like she’s turning into an adult more than capable of handling it.
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