The British actress' character Arya Stark had a sex scene with Gendry in the second episode of HBO's long-running fantasy show's eighth and final season.
- Jun 17, 2022
AceShowbiz - Maisie Williams revisited her famous "Game of Thrones" role in a new interview. The British actress, who played Arya Stark on HBO's long-running fantasy series, revealed that she was surprised when she found out that her character is straight.
"The first time that I was surprised by Arya I guess was probably in the final series where she whips off her clothes and sleeps with Gendry," Maisie shared during a "Teen Vogue Firsts" video interview. She was referring to Arya's sex scene with Gendry (Joe Dempsie) in "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms", the second episode of the show's eighth and final season.
Maisie admitted that she's always thought that Arya was queer. "I thought that Arya was queer, you know?" so she added. "So … yeah. That was a surprise."
"The New Mutants" actress wasn't the only who thought so. Many "GoT" fans also assumed Arya was queer, resulting in a massive backlash over the decision to make her sleep with a male character.
Back in 2019, Maisie revealed to Entertainment Weekly that she initially thought the sex scene was only a prank pulled by showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who are known for sending out fake script pages to their cast to prevent spoilers. "At first, I thought it was a prank," Williams said at the time. "I was like, 'Yo, good one.' And [the showrunners were] like, 'No, we haven't done that this year.' Oh f**k!"
Despite the huge popularity that she earned through the show, Maisie previously shared that she grew to resent playing Arya during her own coming-of-age as a woman. She explained to GQ U.K. that the character made people expect her to look and act like her tomboyish character.
"I think that when I started becoming a woman, I resented Arya because I couldn't express who I was becoming," she said at the time. "And then I also resented my body, because it wasn't aligned with the piece of me that the world celebrated."
