Maisie Williams (Arya) discusses THAT scene with Gendry

Have you seen the latest episode of Game of Thrones, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms”? If not, I’ll give you a second to vacate the premises. If not…

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Okay, let’s talk about Arya and Gendry having sex. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, actor Maisie Williams (Arya) said it was her best friend Sophie Turner (Sansa) that gave her the tip-off:

"I called Maisie and was like: ‘Have you read it yet?’ And she’s like, ‘I’m midway through episode one.’ And I’m like: This scene, this page, read it! This is awesome! She was very happy."

At first, Williams thought the sex scene was a prank, something showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss have been known to do. “I was like, ‘Yo, good one.’ And [the showrunners were] like, ‘No, we haven’t done that this year.’ Oh f—k!”

"I got to the read-through and I’m reading the scene and thought, ‘Oh, we’re actually going to do this. When do I shoot this? I need to go to the gym.’ A whole list of things."

So, was that actually Willaims or a body double doing the partially nude scene? We’ll let her explain:

"David and Dan were like: ‘You can show as much or as little as you want’ So I kept myself pretty private. I don’t think it’s important for Arya to flash. This beat isn’t really about that. And everybody else has already done it on the show, so…"

It’s definitely cool that Benioff and Weiss let Williams have a say in how this scene went down, particularly given that, in its early days, the show had a reputation for exploitation.

Joe Dempsie (Gendry), who is ten years older than Williams, definitely felt awkward about the scene. “It’s obviously slightly strange for me because I’ve known Maisie since she was 11, 12 years old,” he said. “At the same time, I don’t want to be patronizing toward Maisie — she’s a 20-year-old woman. So we just had a lot of fun with it.”

And there’s much more to this scene than just the bam-chika-wah-wah aspect. It’s about Arya getting back in touch with her humanity after spent killing Lannister soldiers and learning to steal faces and poisoning rooms full of Freys and so on. “It was really interesting because it’s a very human relationship for Arya,” Williams said. “This is something she’s stayed away from, an emotion we’ve never really seen her engage with.

"David and Dan were like, ‘It’s the end of the world, what else would you have her do?’ This may be is a moment where Arya accepts death tomorrow, which she never does — ‘Not Today.’ So it was that moment where she says, ‘We’re probably going to die tomorrow, I want to know what this feels like before that happens.’ It’s interesting to see Arya be a bit more human, speak more normally about things people are scared of."

Let’s hope Arya will continue to say “Not Today” to death when it comes calling next week. And then maybe we can talk about a couples vacation with Gendry or something.

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