The Stark kids discuss growing up on Game of Thrones

Bran became the King of Westeros, Sansa the Queen in the North, and Arya a bonafide adventurer. Looking back on their time through eight seasons of Game of Thrones, Isaac Hempstead Wright, Sophie Turner, and Maisie Williams recall what it was like growing up on the set of the most popular television series in the history of television.

“I have only recently come to terms with how weird my childhood was,” Wright told Complex. “You just kind of go with it when you’re doing it at the time, but I’ve now realised [that] I’ve spent my formative years on the world’s biggest television series, which is strange to comprehend.”

Wright, who was just 10 years old when he began filming his first scene as Bran, recalls being miserable right out of the gate. “I can remember my first day of shooting, because it just rained non-stop and I was like, ‘I don’t think I can do this. What have I gotten myself into?’”

Image: Game of Thrones/HBO

Clearly, he made the right decision to stick it out. Sure, it took getting shoved out of a tower window and losing his ancestral home of Winterfell to get to where he was at the end, but Bran ended up doing pretty okay for himself.

"I just think he has the most extraordinary story, as a disabled ten-year-old, in one of the most brutal universes ever created, who loses his home and his family… and yet, despite all of that, or maybe in fact because of it, he is able to remove himself and dedicate himself to the strange mystical power he has, and actually ends up becoming one of the most powerful characters there is."

If Bran had it bad, Sansa had it worse. Used as a tool against her own family by the Lannisters, creeped on and manipulated by Littlefinger, and beaten and sexually assaulted by Ramsay Bolton, every single trial Sansa was put through only made he stronger. “I think [Sansa] is not power-hungry, which automatically makes her a better leader than most people in Game of Thrones, because they get blinded by that power,” Wright said of his on-screen sister. “I think she’s very diplomatic and fair, politically minded, honest, and she’s been through the worst and has come out of it on top.”

Williams named a scene between Arya and Sansa in season 7 as emblematic of their sisterly relationship. “I never could have survived what you survived,” Arya tells her sister on the ramparts of Winterfell. “You would have,” Sansa replies. “You’re the strongest person I know.”

Williams calls that the “best line of last season.” She also claims credit for it. “You know [series writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss] stole that line from an interview I gave. I said Arya would never survive what Sansa survived, and Sansa would never have survived what Arya survived, and then [the characters] said the lines!”

Turned joined in. “Surely you should get writer’s credit,” she joked.

Sansa and Arya’s journeys through Game of Thrones may both have been difficult, but they could not have been more different, as Turner pointed out. “I would have loved to do proper stunts, because I never really got to work with the stunt team unless it was [when I was] getting beaten,” she said. “They are an Emmy-award winning stunt team, and I never got to work with them!”

But it goes both ways. “I would have loved to have worn a corset at least once,” Williams said. “A really, really nice dress for just one scene.” Turner: “I would have liked to have worn trousers and no corset,” Turner replied. Williams: “Grass is always greener.”

Getting back to Bran, the moment that most shaped him into the man he became by the end of the series was almost certainly the death of Hodor. “That was really dramatic, watching [Kristian Nairn] act his heart out in that scene [with] all the hands gripping at Hodor in that final selfless gesture…that was quite emotional,” Wright remembered. “But I think because it’s such a long drawn out process, you don’t quite register how powerful and emotional it is on the day. I kind of thought that when I watched it back. I would be like, ‘I saw all that, I know what’s going to happen’, but it really made me cry.”

And Wright was quite close to Nairn on set. “Kristian Nairn (Hodor) was my uncle/dad figure, a very close friend of mine. I was literally strapped to his back from day one — so he kind of had to get on with me!”

"When I was younger, I used to sing little Sponge Bob songs in his ear. It would really annoy him. The guy’s poor back started getting damaged."

Unlike Bran, Wright admits to getting emotional on his last day filming. “I did [cry], I didn’t think I was going to,” he said.

Naturally, his onscreen sisters were right there with him. “It was really nostalgic, and very emotional…It was just a season of heartbreak,” said Turner. “After so many years, it is impossible to say goodbye in the right way.”

“It’s impossible to put all of that emotion into your final take [as] they call cut,” Williams agreed. “It’s impossible to be able to, one, feel all of that in one moment, and two, be able to thank anyone enough. We knew it was going to take a lot of time to set in. Still is.”

While the ending of filming was sad, the Stark siblings didn’t spend much time apart before returning for a reunion special that featured Lord Eddard Stark himself, Sean Bean. “It was amazing,” Turner recalled. “Seeing Sean Bean was the craziest thing. I think I cried when I saw [him]. It was so emotional seeing dad again!”

As for what’s next, Wright is going to back to university. “It was impossibly difficult,” he said. “I left because it was literally just as I started filming the new season, and I’d spend all my time at university stressing about going back to Belfast and working, and all my time working would be spent worrying about getting back into lectures.”

"I’ve just spent nine years [acting] and feel like I’ve just lived an entire lifetime – but I’m only just turning twenty, and my life is only just beginning. So I just feel like I want to do something a little bit different for a while."

Williams is in a similar space. “I’m 21 and ready to go into the next chapter of my life,” she said. “Everyone has just left university, and we’re all trying to figure out if we want to go on a gap year or start working.”

Turner: “Holidays and free time.” Williams: “A lot of partying. And petting my dog.”

You can see that reunion special on Game of Thrones: The Complete Collection, which is out now.

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