Game of Thrones always looked like one of those shows that was pretty strenuous to make, what with so many scenes being set out in the wilderness as characters battled with swords and bows and arrows. While it might be more fun than sitting in a studio every day, it does come with its own set of unique challenges.
Just ask Maisie Williams, who spent eight seasons playing Arya Stark. She started her journey on the show at 12 years old, spending many of her formative years on set. With the help of Needle, the sword gifted to her by Jon Snow, and the tutorage of master swordsman Syrio Forel, Arya trained herself up to be a worthy fighter. But Williams herself occasionally struggled to grasp sword-fighting.
Discussing her time on Game of Thrones, Williams recalls an "embarassing" moment when she accidentally whacked herself on the head with her own sword. Ouch.
Let's set the scene: "There's a moment where I'm jabbing The Hound in his chest plate with my sword, and obviously it's like not going through because he's got armor on, and they wanted to get a nice close-up shot of the sword warping, but we need to use the real sword that doesn't warp as easily because it's the close shot," Williams told the Armchair Expert podcast.
And then, after some help from the crew, her next attempt at warping the sword saw her injure herself:
"I jabbed it in and then a combination of people — it was a lot of cooks, you know? Like, I'm warping it, I'm trying to tell someone how I want to warp it, while another person is saying 'Do you think that you could stab him?' and they move the tip of the sword. And where I'm trying to warp it I flick the sword and crack myself on the eyebrow. For the rest of the day they have to shoot me from the other side because I've got this huge egg."
The camera only shot one side of Williams' face for the rest of the shoot. "It was so embarrassing," she added. "Like you know when you can hear everyone go , and I was just like 'Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry.'"
Maisie Williams' latest project, The New Look, is now streaming on Apple TV+. Thankfully there's no sword fighting in this one.
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