Spoilers ahead! Perhaps like you, when Maisie Williams realized her Game of Thrones character Arya was about to have sex for the first time with her longtime friend Gendry, played by Joe Dempsie, during Sunday night’s season-eight episode “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,†she assumed the scene was a practical joke. “At first, I thought it was a prank,†the actress told Entertainment Weekly, “I was like, ‘Yo, good one.’ And [the showrunners were] like, ‘No, we haven’t done that this year.’ Oh f**k!â€
Shock aside, Williams says Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and Dan Weiss asked her to pick whatever level of nudity felt right for the scene, a choice presumably complicated by the dozens of other sex scenes in the series. “David and Dan were like: ‘You can show as much or as little as you want,’†explained Williams. “So I kept myself pretty private. I don’t think it’s important for Arya to flash. This beat isn’t really about that. And everybody else has already done it on the show, so …â€
Adding to the inherent weirdness in taking your top off at work is the fact Williams has been a part of the Game of Thrones cast since she was 11, essentially growing up alongside her castmates. “It’s obviously slightly strange for me because I’ve known Maisie since she was 11, 12 years old,†Dempsie added. “At the same time, I don’t want to be patronizing toward Maisie — she’s a 20-year-old woman. So we just had a lot of fun with it.â€
And in the end, if Arya should lose her life to the army of the dead, isn’t it probably better she had one last normal coming-of-age experience before she shuffles off Westeros’s mortal coil? “This maybe is a moment where Arya accepts death tomorrow, which she never does — ‘Not today,’†Williams muses. “So it was that moment where she says, ‘We’re probably going to die tomorrow, I want to know what this feels like before that happens.’ It’s interesting to see Arya be a bit more human, speak more normally about things people are scared of.â€