We all know Bella Ramsey (now 15), the young actor who brought dignity and bite into the character of Lyanna Mormont, who became a fan favorite from the first moment she appeared on screen. Now that Game of Thrones is over and Lyanna died valiantly taking down an undead giant at the Battle of Winterfell, Ramsey sat down to chat with the Evening Standard about the reality of having an active acting while still not out of middle school.
It’s been something of a trial for Ramsey, being thrust into the limelight by her role on the megahit show while also trying to be a regular kid. During the filming of “The Long Night,” for example, she had to go to a corner of the Winterfell set — still covered in artificial blood and gore — to study English Comprehension between takes of her character being crushed to death.
And things aren’t much easier now, as Ramsey works on school projects in between scenes on the set of her latest gig, playing Mildred Hubble on CBBC’s The Worst Witch. The good thing, as far as the actor is concerned, is that she really enjoys the “flexibility” of her nontraditional education program, an online homeschool platform called Interhigh.
“Maths is kind of my favourite.” Ramsey said. “I would do maths problems everyday.” The online environment seems to fit her personality; she feels that in traditional school “everyone was put in a box. There was no room for personalisation. In acting, I like it because every take, I try to make it a little bit different.”
Game of Thrones was Ramsey’s first real acting job; she was only 13 years old when she first donned Lyanna’s Mormont armor. She had to keep the news of her casting a secret, but it caused problems at her traditional school. “Everyone was intrigued by what I was doing and what it was all about,” she explains. “But I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone yet, especially because Lyanna was a new character.”
“Other people started taking it the wrong way,” Ramsey continues. “I tried to explain that I had to sign something and that I wasn’t just being difficult – I just wasn’t allowed to say.” Yet everyone did find out, and Ramsey was swamped in instant popularity “for all the wrong reasons.”
"I just didn’t care about social expectations or anything. I was just myself. I was hoping that it could just carry on and I was wanting it to just not affect anything at school but it really did in terms of both education and friendships."
“A lot of little things built up” that convinced Ramsey make the move to homeschooling, but it was a negative run-in with a teacher that sealed the deal. After missing a number of music classes due to her Thrones shooting schedule, she had fallen behind in her trumpet lessons. “The teacher sort of humiliated me about it,” she recounts. “That was what tipped it and so the next day I didn’t go back.”
And so Ramsey enrolled in the online homeschooling program. “It is incredibly flexible, incredibly accommodating yet it has given me structure still, which I fell I very much need,” she said. “I love it and recommend it to everyone. I think it allows people to be who they truly are and it leaves room for people to do the non-academic things they love.”
Ramsey has a lot more juggling to do. She’s starring in the Judy Garland biopic Judy with Renee Zellwegger this year, plus a role in the World War 2 drama Resistance with Jesse Eisenberg and Ed Harris.
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