Maisie Williams talks moving beyond Arya Stark

We’re three years out from the end of Game of Thrones, but the show will always be a part of the cast members as they spread their wings and go on to do other things. That includes Maisie Williams, who’s about to debut as punk icon Jordan in the FX series Pistol and then as Catherine Dior in the Apple TV+ project The New Look. But it’s hard to shake the image of her as the vengeance-obsessed Arya Stark.

Speaking to Variety, Williams talked about adjusting to life after the show, which had a famously divisive ending. “I don’t really mind that it ended that way,” Williams said. “We were so disconnected from — I felt like my life and how it changed was so disconnected from the actual storyline of the show. It just was getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and you couldn’t go to more places and you couldn’t, you know, sleep on an airplane or whatever.”

"And then it ended, and it was (exhales) — we can breathe. And when everyone was like, “But we hate the ending!” It was just kind of like, “Well, it’s nice for it to be done and to actually find some kind of normal life.” I feel like I would have felt like that even if it had an amazing ending, you know?"

This is a nice reminder that most of the cast and crew members don’t spend their time thinking about whether the ending was good or bad; they did the work, and it’s a part of them, and now it’s over.

Maisie Williams is “really looking forward” to House of the Dragon

But the franchise isn’t. HBO is getting ready to premiere a brand new Game of Thrones series called House of the Dragon, set some 200 years before the original show. “I’m really looking forward to it, actually,” Williams said. “My friend Olivia [Cooke] is in it, and it’s been really interesting just chatting to her about the experience.”

"I think it’s actually a lot more pressure. All of the hung-over concerns of our show are now just being piled onto this new cast of people who had nothing to do with it. I want to be as supportive as possible to her as an actress, but also, I’m just really curious. I’m kind of looking forward to watching “Game of Thrones” — even though it’s not “Game of Thrones” — and experiencing it as a person that’s not on it. ‘Cause all I’ve done is meet people who have done just that, and I never really was able to relate to it."

Olivia Cooke, incidentally, is playing Alicent Hightower, the wife of the late King Viserys who is fighting his daughter Rhaenyra for the Iron Throne. The show will definitely bring Williams the Game of Thrones experience.

Maisie Williams did not find filming her Game of Thrones scenes “traumatic”

Not long ago, Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner made headlines for saying that she’s sure she’ll “exhibit some symptoms of trauma down the road” thanks to the intense work she did on Game of Thrones. She said it in a pretty off-hand way in conversation with her friend Jessica Chastain, but naturally some outlets reported on it like she was making a medical diagnosis of herself.

In any case, Variety brought up the comment to Williams and asked if she felt similarity about Arya, who did kill rather a lot of people onscreen. “I didn’t find the the scenes that I shot on Game of Thrones, and the nature of the violence and the descent into obsession over this list of names that she wants to kill — I didn’t necessarily find that traumatic to do,” Williams said carefully. “I think I just found, you know, growing — well, I’m not even gonna say that. I didn’t find those scenes traumatic to do.”

Speaking of Turner, Williams says that she’s still in contact with pretty much everyone from the show. “We’re all on a group chat, which is lovely…Everyone’s doing really well. And I think that it’s nice to keep up with people enjoying their lives, which had been dominated by the show for so long.”

Maisie Williams sounds open to returning as Arya Stark, but only when she’s “ready”

As for whether Williams will ever return as Arya, she seems open to the possibility, but is careful not to promise anything she’s not yet ready to deliver. “That’s what everyone wants from me,” she said. “But they’re not going to get it until it’s the right time! It’s nice to know what people want from you, even if it’s not what you’re ready to give.”

At the moment, Williams is ready to explore other kinds of parts, although she does seem to have a penchant for women who push boundaries, like Arya or Jordan in Pistol. “They’re both like pretty unmoving in their vision and their approach to life,” she said. “And maybe, you know, I’m finally learning something about myself.”

"I’ve been keen to do roles where I have some kind of physical transformation, and that explore parts of womanhood that I’ve never been able to through playing Arya. I have a more rational understanding of people and the world around me; Arya was very hot or cold, no in-between. That’s just not the way the world works! It’s quite nice now to read projects and to understand these women in a new way. Because there’s so much more that I have to give, and I could never have done with Arya."

You can see Williams as Jordan in Pistol, which premieres on FX and FX on Hulu today!

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.

Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels