‘That was a surprise’: Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams thought Arya Stark was queer until final season

Maisie Williams has admitted she was “surprised” by Arya’s sex scene in Game of Thrones because she was convinced her character was queer.

The actor was cast as Arya in the hit HBO fantasy epic when she was 12 in 2009. She spent her teenage years acting on the series, which ended after eight seasons in 2019.

In a new interview, Williams said that she was “surprised” when the show’s writers decided to have Arya consummate her relationship with Gendry Baratheon (Joe Dempsie).

The two characters have sex in the second episode of Game of Thrones’s eighth and final season titled “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms”.

“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,” the 25-year-old said during a Teen Vogue Firsts video interview.

“I thought that Arya was queer, you know? So… yeah. That was a surprise.”

In a 2019 interview, Williams previously said she thought showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss were pranking her when she first read the script in which Arya and Gendry have sex.

Viewers at the time similarly took issue with the scene, with many also having believed that Arya identified as gay. The character, however, could still be bisexual.

Recently, Williams opened up about how she began to resent her role in GoT when she reached puberty.

“I think that when I started becoming a woman, I resented Arya because I couldn’t express who I was becoming,” she said.