Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams has said she was surprised when Ayra Stark slept with Gendry Baratheon as she had always believed her character was queer.
Ayra and Gendry slept together in A Knight of the Seven Kings - the second episode of the long-running show’s final season, but the scene came as a bit of a surprise to Williams.
In an interview with Teen Vogue, she said: “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.
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“I thought that Arya was queer, you know? So … yeah. That was a surprise.”
Many fans also believed that Arya was queer, so the scene prompted a bit of a backlash at the time.
Williams has previously said that when she received the script for that episode, she thought the scene was a ‘prank’.
Game of Thrones, showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss had been known to send out fake scripts to wind-up the cast members – and help stave off spoilers – so when the script arrived, Williams, at first, believed she was the latest to be pranked.
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Speaking to Entertainment Weekly in 2019, she said: “At first, I thought it was a prank.
“I was like, ‘Yo, good one.’ And [the showrunners were] like, ‘No, we haven’t done that this year.’ Oh f**k!”
The star said the shock had worn off by the time the cast gathered for a table read, but went on to say: "I got to the read-through and I'm reading the scene and thought, ‘Oh, we're actually going to do this. When do I shoot this? I need to go to the gym.' A whole list of things."
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The show bowed out in 2019, after an eight-year run, but since then Williams has reprised her character to voice Arya in the MultiVersus video game.
She’s also admitted that she would be happy to play the role again, should the opportunity come up, but warned over-excited fans that a spin-off wasn’t on the cards just yet.
She said: “I’m not saying it would never happen, but I’m also not saying it in this interview so that everyone goes … ‘The spinoff! It’s coming!’ Because it’s not.”
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Topics: Film and TV, Game of Thrones, Celebrity
Claire Reid