Maisie Williams on how acting in The New Look was harder than Game of Thrones

Maisie Williams shot to fame as assassin Arya Stark on Game of Thrones, a role that requied her to duck, weave, stab and slash her way into our hearts. It was intense, but Williams says that her new role as Catherine Dior in the Apple TV+ series The New Look took more endurance. Playing Arya, she told Bazaar, involved "building different muscles." But playing Catherine "took over what I’m eating and how I’m moving and sleeping and thinking..."

Catherine Dior was the younger sister of famed fashion designer Christian Dior. The show will explore what they were up to during the Nazi occupation of Paris during World War II. Catherine was a resistance fighter who was captured by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp. She survived and was subsequently awarded several medals of honor for her bravery in fighting with the resistance, but the experience was harrowing, and Williams had to face it head on. "It was very relentless," she said. "[T]he process of doing take after take, it really breaks down your character in a way. It’s not for everyone, but for me, I like to get lost in a role, and keep on pushing until we complete a scene."

When Catherine returned to Paris from the Ravensbrück concentration camp after the end of the war, she was emaciated. To portray this, Williams lost 12 kilograms, or about 26 lbs. She had regular blood tests and measurements of her heart rate along the way to make sure she wasn't in medical danger. "I was eating very little, meditating all the time, burning candles and incense in my apartment," she remembers.

Maisie Williams lost 26 lbs to Catherine Dior in The New Look

Williams lost much of the weight by sweating it out right before filming these scenes, a technique used by boxers and jockeys on the day of a fight or race. "I had to be up at 4am to start sweating. The night before, at about 7 or 8pm I was allowed to have something salty and dehydrating– some smoked salmon and a tiny glass of wine. Then I had a boiling-hot bath with lots of salts in it. And I sort of levitated to bed and slept for maybe three hours, and woke up and had a handful of nuts. I wouldn’t be able to sleep through the night at this point. I kept waking up and feeling like a marble inside a bottle, rattling around..."

That sounds brutal. I'm not sure you could pay me enough to do that, but the job as a whole sounds like it was artistically fulfilling for Williams. "It was a long job, and it was amazing; my whole life moved to Paris," she said. "It was hard work, but it was such an honour to do this part, and it became all-consuming. This was a role that required an extraordinary amount of research and care – and it really hit me, bringing that wartime period back to the streets of Paris; like I could acknowledge the weight of it in a way that I hadn’t before."

"Every day of filming was a reminder that we were portraying a story of the horrors that humans are capable of inflicting on one another, but also the magic and the hope and the love... Ultimately, we wanted to make a show that was uplifting."

The New Look also stars Ben Mendelsohn as Christian Dior, Juliette Binoche as fashion icon Coco Chanel, and John Malkovich as Parisian couturier Lucien Lelong. Those are some big names, but anyone's who's watched Williams on Game of Thrones knows that she can act alongside any of them.

The New Look premieres on Apple TV+ on February 14. The first season runs 10 episodes.

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