If Maisie Williams wanted to hit the brakes on the whole revenge-killing thing, it would be perfectly understandable. As the cherubic assassin Arya Stark on Game of Thrones, she’s already perfected the art of striking back. But the 23-year-old actor knows a great part when she sees one, which is why she can now be found putting the kibosh on more unfortunate souls in the comic action fantasy Two Weeks to Live. In the SKY series, Williams plays Kim Noakes, a young woman who was raised as a survivalist by her Sarah Connor-esque mother (Fleabag’s Sian Clifford). She also knows her way around a firearm, which comes in handy when she ventures out into the real world to avenge the death of her father, who died when she was young under mysterious circumstances. The show has been compared to Killing Eve for its fiendish British humor, but also for centering women who are as three-dimensional as they are ruthless. For Williams, who can also be seen in the comic book freakout The New Mutants and the home-invasion thriller The Owners, it’s a new phase in a career that is suddenly wide open after sharpening her skills on one of the most-watched shows of all time. As she tells her New Mutants costar Charlie Heaton, this is just the beginning. —BEN BARNA

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CHARLIE HEATON: So how do we do this? Do we just start? I wrote some questions.

MAISIE WILLIAMS: You actually had to write questions? I thought they were just going to give you questions.

HEATON: I’m prepared. Where are you living right now?

WILLIAMS: Technically I live in London, but I’ve been flitting around a bit. I don’t really know where I want to live. I don’t think we want to be in London anymore. I think we quite like being in the countryside, but whether we stay in Britain or we go to France, we’re still deciding.

HEATON: I remember you mentioned that you didn’t know where to call home. I think you actually said, “I don’t really love being anywhere.” That resonated with me, because we have this job where we don’t ever feel settled. You move around a lot.

WILLIAMS: Just out of curiosity, where did you end up buying?

HEATON: In Atlanta.

WILLIAMS: That’s a smart move because you work there so much. It’s becoming a bit of a home to you.

HEATON: I’ve spent time in New York, but I found that it’s a great place to visit. Every time I go somewhere, I’m like, “This is where I want to be.” And then I’m like, “But do I want to live here?” So it was a surprise for me to buy this place. I like Atlanta because it’s calm, and I’ve got friends here, so it makes sense.

WILLIAMS: Yeah, I’m trying to figure it out. I have had a couple of different places, and I rent them all out at the moment, but I guess what I really missed is having a place which is my own, that I always go back to.

HEATON: I’ve lived out of a suitcase for four years. When you’re a young actor, you’re expected to live a transient life. You start to feel a bit anxious about that. I read somewhere that you’re learning French. How’s that going?

WILLIAMS: It’s going well. Every time I think I’m fluent, I realize I don’t have a clue how to say anything, but I’m going back to Paris to learn some more. I’ve been going to this school called Alliance Francaise, and it’s really great. It’s been nice to spend this downtime concentrating on something because when you don’t have a role to prepare for, or a script to read, or an audition to do, you can feel a bit lost. It’s been nice to use this time and do something that’s all my own, and not for anyone else.

HEATON: If these questions are boring, you can just say, “Stop asking me these dumb questions.” We’ll do a couple of Game of Thrones questions and that’s it. What did it feel like on your last day on set? Is it burned into your memory?

WILLIAMS: A lot, actually. I was just so hyper-aware, every day of the final season, because I really wanted to savor every last piece of it. A lot of my final scenes were in episode five, which was the battle episode, and I was covered in blood, dust, and rubble, so it was really hot. Before every take, I’d have to lie down and they’d pour this icky blood over my eyes, and then they’d put the dust on top, and then more blood. And we’d reset it every single take. I’d have to tilt my head to the side so that the blood went sideways, across my eyelids. It was uncomfortable, but every time I was like, “I’m never, ever, ever going to get to do this again.”

HEATON: That’s really cool. Coming out of it, I’m guessing you had this beautiful feeling of freedom and clarity.

WILLIAMS: Yeah. I think because I had really savored everything, by the time it was over I was ready to let go. There wasn’t any part of me that was clawing at it to stay. And now I’ve come to realize there’s so many parts of the industry which I haven’t even touched, and it’s really exciting to meet with filmmakers, producers, and writers who work on things of all different types of scale, and learn things that are so new to me. I feel ready to show everyone the other parts of myself which they’ve never gotten to see before.

HEATON: I got to watch Two Weeks to Live, which I really loved. You worked on that with Sian Clifford, who I met once and who was so lovely. What was it like to work with her?

WILLIAMS: Sian is truly the kindest soul that I’ve ever worked with. She’ll go out of her way to tell people that she really respects their work. It sounds so simple, but it’s rare to meet people who dedicate their lives to lifting others up. From the readthrough, we were completely on the same page about the characters, the traps we didn’t want to fall in, the mistakes we didn’t want to make, what we needed to amplify, and what we wanted to hold back on. She’s nothing like her character in Fleabag. She’s so sweet and lovely, but she does bitter and angry so well.

HEATON: That’s really nice to hear. There’s something to be said about just being nice.

WILLIAMS: It goes a long way. The age of people being rewarded for poor behavior is slowly ending. We have the best job in the world, and I don’t know why people need to be so angry, because it’s so joyous. And especially right now, we’re at this breaking point. So many parts of society are desperately trying to cling onto this old world, and things are progressing so fast, and it’s such a pressurized moment in time. To be making art right now is special. What we do is going to be around forever, I think. There’s no need to be so mean during that, because you’re so lucky.

HEATON: In the last few years, we’ve seen a lot of shows with strong female leads, like Fleabag, Killing Eve, and your show. You’ve been pretty outspoken about that kind of representation. Do you want to talk about that?

WILLIAMS: I’ve had such a wonderful opportunity to play amazing characters in the beginning of my career, and I’ve learned so much from the women who came before me, because it’s meant that I’ve had a new and a better experience than some of them. It’s like passing the baton. But we’re at a point where unless there are female writers, or female directors, or female producers who can bring these stories to life, there will always be a disconnect between the material and how it’s put together. A lot of people rely on female actors, like, “Can you just sew up all these holes that we haven’t quite figured out? Because none of us know what it’s like to be a young woman in society today.” That’s fine, but there are incredible female writers out there that are doing this already, or incredible female directors who can help with this very problem.

HEATON: We’re on the precipice of change, and it keeps continuing to go in the right direction. It’s great to see that.

WILLIAMS: Absolutely. I was defined by so many of these characters. I grew up watching Sarah Connor in Terminator, or Ripley in Alien, or Trinity in The Matrix. Coming off of Game of Thrones, I was like, “When am I going to play that character?” And then I looked back and realized, “Oh, I think I’ve done that.”

HEATON: Oh, you have. I did want to ask about that cool fight scene in episode two, because I felt it had nods to Game of Thrones. Was it fun?

WILLIAMS: I’ve never really done hand-to-hand combat before. Everything I did on that show was with weapons, which I did enjoy, but it was so much more fun throwing fists.

HEATON: It’s so brutal. How long did you do that for?

WILLIAMS: The whole sequence, from breaking into the house to the end of the fight, was probably four or five days. But really, the big fight, we did it in two nights. We didn’t have long at all to shoot the entire show, so all of the shots were planned before. We had a really strong plan of action, which I’d never experienced before.

HEATON: Also, late last night me and my housemates got to see The Owners.

WILLIAMS: Was it scary?

HEATON: It was fucking creepy. Have you not seen it?

WILLIAMS: I did. I thought it was really scary, but it’s hard to know.

HEATON: Natalia [Dyer, Heaton’s girlfriend] had to leave the room three times. She was like, “I’m done.” Speaking of new experiences, was this your first full-on horror movie?

WILLIAMS: I really wanted to do a psychological thriller. I’ve always loved the genre, and this was set in rural England in the ‘90s, so I thought the imagery would be really cool.

HEATON: For sure. I’m from Bridlington, so I’m really familiar with that lower-class council ‘90s feeling. You’re from Bath, right?

WILLIAMS: No, I was born in Bristol, and then I moved to Bath when I was about 16, so I spent a lot of time in both places. But yeah, that feeling of no escape, very little opportunity, and a lot of petty crime, that was just how we grew up, so it was awfully familiar.

HEATON: I wanted to ask you about this, because coming from Bridlington and Bristol, it felt almost impossible to become an actor. Even being on EastEnders felt untouchable. Do you ever think about that? Because when I go home and I go to the local pub with my old friends, I do get that feeling. It’s difficult being from a working-class background and coming from a small town to trying to break into acting. It is, unfortunately, a little classist. A girl in Bridlington sent me a message saying, “I wanted to be an actor, but I decided it’s probably not going to happen, so I gave up. But then I watched Stranger Things and read you were from Bridlington, so now I’m trying to get into drama school.”

WILLIAMS: Yeah. I was really lucky to find a character like Arya, because they were looking for a girl like me. Going home is really lovely, but totally bizarre, because I still feel like the same person, but it’s very different now. Even in the little village that I grew up in, there’re new families who have moved in. It belongs to other people now, and all of a sudden there’s this famous actress who’s come there. That’s always really strange.

HEATON: I understand that.

WILLIAMS: I think the fear of never escaping stops people from ever getting out. I’ve never really spoken to you about how you got started.

HEATON: I grew up in Bridlington until I was 16, and I lived with my mum and my sisters. I finished school, got my GCSE’s, and at the time I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was in between music and acting, but my dad lived in London, and I knew I wanted to go there, because whatever I wanted to do, I knew there was more out there than just this town. And I remember my mum being like, “Just make sure you apply for Bridlington Sports College in case you change your mind.” That was the first big decision of many. I moved to London and lived with my dad, and for those first six to eight months, I was super lonely. My dad didn’t really know how to look after a 16-year-old boy. He’d leave me two pounds in the kitchen and be like, “Go get some beans,” so I lived off fried beans and toast. But I stuck it out. And in the beginning it was music. I met a few bands, my uncle had a recording studio, and within the first eight months, I’d joined this band and we did a UK tour. Things were going in the right direction. Then I joined another band, and I got to tour in Canada and Japan, and at that point I was like, “I’ve made it. I’m only 18 but I can die now.” But then my dad wanted rent. He’s like, “You’re 18 now, you’re paying rent.” You’ve only been supplying me with beans for the last two years, and now you want rent off me? For God’s sake. But my sister was like, “Come with me to this casting. If they take you on you could maybe get some commercial work on the side and make a few grand.” And I was like, “A few grand? Wow.” That’s where it began, in an advert for EE, in a conga line with Kevin Bacon. That was my first job.

WILLIAMS: No way. You’re in an EE advert?

HEATON: I was in an EE commercial doing the Conga.

WILLIAMS: I’m so glad I asked. I had no idea. That is perfect.

HEATON: I got two grand, and congaed with a movie star. I was pretty happy.

WILLIAMS: And then Charlie Heaton was born.

HEATON: I would say this to anyone trying to do this. Just take what you can, because you never know what’ll happen.

WILLIAMS: I’ve always got the same advice for people. You’ve got to take every opportunity, even if it’s not an end game. It all pushes you forward, and it’s all going to make a difference. And it will make a wonderful segment in an interview one day.

Makeup by Carole Truquès.

PINK NEWS– Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams has said she is “excited” to play a queer superhero in love in upcoming X-Men spinoff The New Mutants.

The film will feature a relationship between superheroes Rahne Sinclair (Williams) and Danielle Moonstar, played by Blu Hunt.

Speaking on a panel at Comic Con @ Home, Williams spoke of the importance of representing same-sex love on-screen.

“It was really wonderful to be able to see a relationship look like this,” Williams said.

“In the typically quite masculine world of superheroes, it was just lovely to see these two fragile women who just protect one another and bring light out in each other, but I’m glad that the fans are so excited for it because I think it’s really important to see relationships like this.”

Maisie Williams said her storyline in The New Mutants is a ‘really lovely love story’.

She continued: “I think at the heart of it is just this really lovely love story. It just brings it back to reality, I think.”

Meanwhile, Hunt spoke of her nerves at kissing Williams during a screen test for the film.

“You can’t imagine how nervous I am. Like, oh, I have go kiss Maisie Williams? It was very nerve-racking.”

Josh Boone, the film’s director, said the relationship is the “spine” of the movie.

I think at the heart of it is just this really lovely love story. It just brings it back to reality, I think.

“We just wanted to have them be characters that you fell in love with as they fell in love,” he said.

British Vogue-The second episode of Pistol, the new Disney+ miniseries from writer Craig Pearce and director Danny Boyle which tracks the stratospheric rise and spectacular fall of the Sex Pistols, opens with a shot of Maisie Williams as Jordan. Born Pamela Rooke, the punk icon is seen cycling down a quiet street in her hometown of Seaford in East Sussex. She has her platinum blonde hair piled into a towering beehive, dramatic eye make-up and wears a yellow PVC coat that is completely transparent. Young men heckle her, elderly women cower and mothers try to shield the eyes of their children, but Jordan holds her head high, even when she boards a train to London and the stares intensify. Meanwhile, Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me” plays over their chatter. It’s a remarkable moment, one of the strongest in the whole show, and one that encapsulates the revolutionary power of the woman who auteur Derek Jarman labelled “the original Sex Pistol”.

It’s also a reminder to the audience that they don’t own Williams either. After all, the now 25-year-old Bristol native came of age on screen, playing the plucky and later vengeful Arya Stark across eight seasons of Game of Thrones. It earned her a spate of Emmy and SAG nominations, but brought with it unimaginable scrutiny. When, in the HBO epic’s final instalment, her character – then a young adult – had sex, some viewers were horrified. Since then, Williams has shown her range in films like The New Mutants, but this role, and this sequence in particular, marks her most dramatic departure to date – a sign that she is hurtling towards the next phase of her career and ignoring her critics (and those who still view her as a sword-wielding tween) with a brazenness that Jordan would surely admire.

Those costumes must have helped massively with getting into character, but I also heard that you all had a two-month rehearsal period. What was that like?

We did and it gave us the sense of security we needed to go into the production. Filming anything is a marathon and it takes its toll. Having that time set in place a lot of friendships that I’ll have for the rest of my life. We saw each other at our absolute best and worst because it was a challenging time. We were trying to shoot in February 2021, there was a Covid spike and things were delayed, but it meant that we then had even more time together. Even though we all sat six feet away from each other with masks on and the doors wide open in winter, it gave us so much energy. They were the most exciting interactions that most of us had had in almost a year.

My favourite scenes in the show are the sweaty, crowded gigs. How fun were they to work on, especially after a year of isolation?

For one episode, we shot in the original 100 Club on Oxford Street where the Sex Pistols had played. The venue has kept so much of its history up on its walls. It was incredible for all of us to see so many images of the people we were playing and to be recreating that iconic gig within those walls at a time when the whole of central London was deserted. It was a really spiritual moment and a day I’ll never forget.

And which sequences were the most challenging?

I did wonder how I’d fill such big shoes and command the respect that Jordan did. She meant a lot to a lot of people at that time, and coming into that was a bit overwhelming. To be honest, it was all in the outfits, hair and make-up. It gave me a confidence that I had never felt before. Jordan spoke about turning the male gaze in on itself and she was really on to something [laughs]. I’d never been listened to in the same way. It’s funny because we usually associate being the centre of attention with doing a lot or being loud, but Jordan was very minimal in the way she communicated with others. Her image spoke volumes, and mine did too when I played her.

Jordan, of course, had cancer and tragically passed away this April. How did it feel to get the news?

Tracey Seaward, our producer, was in touch with Jordan, and Jordan phoned her to say that she didn’t know how much longer she’d have. I didn’t know who knew [about her illness] up until that point. We were so glad she reached out because it gave us all the opportunity to chat with her one last time. Then, getting the news was devastating. I was heartbroken that she wouldn’t get to watch Pistol, something she’d been really desperate to see. I feel like the universe has such strange ways of working because, maybe more than any other person [depicted in the show], she oversaw so much of what we created. Now I think, maybe she wasn’t supposed to watch it. She was there, she lived it and she was integral to how we told this story. I hope that anyone who watches Pistol and isn’t familiar with her wants to go off and learn more.

Up next, you’re playing another figure from fashion history that people may not be familiar with – Christian Dior’s sister, Catherine – in Apple TV+’s The New Look. What can you tell us about it?

So, Jordan wondered if my playing her would push me towards more projects about fashion and she was absolutely right. For The New Look, it’s been so exciting to unpack everything about this woman and this period, the 1940s in Nazi-occupied France. It’s also been fascinating to tell a story that’s linked to these fashion houses [Dior and Chanel] that are still so important today. The show is hugely insightful in terms of parts of the story that had been lost.

So, what fashion icon are you playing after that?

[Laughs] That’s still TBC.

Pistol is now streaming on Disney+.

GQ-After becoming one of the most recognizable faces on the planet, Maisie Williams committed to a radical next step: being herself

Last winter, Maisie Williams’ front door swung in the wind and was held in place by a chain that a sharp kick could snap. Williams and her partner, the designer and fashion entrepreneur Reuben Selby, were locking up to leave for a six-week holiday when they realised the latch was broken. There wasn’t time to fix it, so the security of the home they’d just moved into (a 1930s cottage in south-west England, filled with all their earthly possessions) would have to rely on a thin sliver of metal and the goodwill of their postwoman. They decided to simply let life happen.

When the pair returned, nothing had changed. Those earthly possessions remained. The cold house was as together as they’d left it, save for the brown leaves that had blown in through the door and scattered across the hallway.

Williams feels safe here. This wouldn’t be possible in London where, until early 2021, she’d lived for five years. She’d first moved to the capital during the frenzy around becoming one of the most recognisable young actors in the world – partway through the eight years she spent playing the prickly and audacious heroine Arya Stark in the fantasy juggernaut, Game of Thrones. It was an HBO show of the scale and lasting pop cultural stature that seemed to die with the advent of the streaming era.

And then it ended, and her obligations changed.

Part of that aftermath involved leaving the city for somewhere that wasn’t her childhood home, but reminded her of it: pastoral; quiet; the kind of place in which you trust the person who delivers your post. Which is where she is now, an hour from the capital, picking me up from the station in a black Tesla, waving semi-maniacally from behind the steering wheel.

The last time we’d seen each other had been six months prior, at Selby’s London Fashion Week presentation. Back then, she’d come off the back of shooting her forthcoming project, Pistol: a Danny Boyle-directed series about the origins of the Sex Pistols in 1970s London, in which she plays Jordan, the model and punk pioneer who worked alongside Vivienne Westwood in the band’s seminal days. Her hair and eyebrows were bleached, giving her the appearance of a gorgeous and lethal nocturnal animal. Today, though, her roots are creeping in, deep brown, in a cool, unkempt way. From behind wire-rimmed glasses, her brows are shades of salt and pepper.

Her new hometown is part of a wider, unwritten plan. “I’ve always missed that part of my life where there isn’t pressure when you go to the shop and no one cares who you are or what you’re doing or what you’re wearing.” She tells me this with legs curled like a wishbone on the grey sofa in her new living room, wearing acid-wash Acne denim, a Marine Serre second skin and an Off-White logo T-shirt.

Her place doesn’t yet have the air of a “celebrity” home; right now, the design imprint is limited to the furnishings. But it’s cosy. Looking out to the garden, the grass descends into a pit of woodland, with knotted trees and bramble. Roe deer and foxes, rabbits and squirrels come by sometimes, she says. “But no people. I’m in heaven.”

“WHAT DO I REALLY CARE ABOUT? AND WHAT DO I WANT TO ACHIEVE WHEN NO ONE IS LOOKING?”

It’s not that Williams is tired of company, more that she’s been battling the idea of being constantly seen for a decade. Leaving London has helped her to answer questions that have plagued her for a while: “What do I really care about? And what do I want to achieve when no one is looking?”

London is like Instagram, an insular gathering of peers and tangential acquaintances, all speaking at each other, conscious of their accomplishments. There, people – whether they’re public figures or not – form themselves in reverse; consider how they want to be seen, then act accordingly. “We subconsciously base our goals and achievements on the way they’re viewed by other people,” she observes, knowing she’s a part of it. “And it doesn’t matter whether or not you achieve those things, because it’s for the satisfaction of someone else. It never feels as good as you pictured it in your head.”

She refers to her own internal sparring as an identity crisis, “but I didn’t confront it until I moved here,” she admits. “The more I tried to be like, ‘Am I like her? Am I like him?’, the more confused I got. Now I just feel like I am doing everything I want to do when I want to do it.” She acts, yes, but her bailiwick boasts many facets: venture capitalist, producer, podcaster, occasional streamer on Twitch. Then there’s her work in sustainability, something that imbues her fashion partnerships with H&M and the luxury brand Coperni. The latter’s CEO and co-founder, Arnaud Vaillant, called her the voice of a generation. “She embodies the strong values of a diverse, innovative and responsible future,” he tells me.

By embracing all these things, she’s quelled her own crisis. Now, Williams says, “I look in the mirror and realise: ‘I see who you are.’”

This level of self-awareness often comes and goes when your job involves playing other people. But looking back before fame was part of her life, Williams remembers an upbeat childhood that gave her solid foundations. Born in 1997, she spent her early years in Clutton, a Somerset parish village of barely 1,500 people, encircled by farmland, with her mother, stepfather and older siblings. She was “outspoken and peculiar”, she says, performing for her friends with the sole intention of making them laugh. She took up dancing classes at primary-school age, and says she was “just very happy at home”.

Unlike most young actors, Williams got ahead in the industry with no formal training or nepotistic leg-up. She was raised in a council house – a fact she once considered almost unremarkable; but today she knows how much harder it is for actors from working-class backgrounds to make it big. Her mother now owns the same house, and Williams goes back from time to time. “I meet people who have no idea how I got to where I am,” she says, loosely clasping the tips of her fingers. Does that assumption annoy her? “No, no it doesn’t! People can think what they like about anyone.” That, like most things, is out of her control.

Williams leaves contemplative pauses in her speech, sometimes as long as 10 seconds, between the end of a question and when she finally breaks the silence to answer it. A decade deep into doing this, she knows when someone is listening. Her words unfurl carefully; she’s seen her interview quotes transformed into tabloid headlines enough times to regret parts of otherwise normal exchanges. Today, on the off-chance she says something she might not later recognise, she chooses to address it out loud.

“That doesn’t sound right either,” she says. “That just sounds like something I’ve read someone else say.” I’d asked Williams to explain the moment she knew that this – acting on camera, being in the public eye – was going to be her future. She goes back and forth, starting and stopping, takes one of those long pauses, and then finds these words: “I knew that the path laid out before me was going to be surprising for a lot of people who knew me, but on the inside I knew that was right.”

In August 2009, just a few months after turning 12 years old, Williams was cast in a role she’d unwittingly spent years preparing for. That adolescent tenacity played well into her role as Arya Stark, the headstrong daughter of the House Stark – violent, whip-smart, powerful. It was the first time she had been in front of a camera.

The casting director Robert Sterne still remembers Maisie’s first audition. “We had seen hundreds of young people for the part,” he tells me, “and then in walked Maisie being honest and brave and unfazed and direct and funny; asking interesting questions. I don’t know how she did it.” Her portrayal of the character of Arya, he says, seemed fully formed from the very beginning.

The character stuck out for many reasons, not least because the idea of a young woman being offered the chance to wield a sword and not vie for the affection of a male character was so anomalous in television at the time. And Maisie, who appreciated the rough-and-tumble experience and did many of her own stunts, leaned into it. The show’s writers “revelled in writing more and more for her character,” Sterne says. “She had a lot to take on and rose to the challenges.”

The show ran for eight seasons, and by the time she’d hit her mid-teens, the world knew who she was. For the first time, she was exposed to that level of fame, walking her first red carpet for season three in Los Angeles. Until then, the show’s younger cast rarely made public appearances. “I’m grateful we were protected from it until that point, too,” Williams says, scratching behind her ear. “If that had happened when I was 12, I’m not sure what that would have done to me mentally.”

She stayed grounded as a consequence, learning how to handle the pressures of fame by twisting them into new forms of motivation. She’d left school by this point – the show’s popularity, she says, led to people changing around her – but instead opted to study at a dance school in her late teens, flitting between Thrones shoots and performances.

“She was just like everyone else, really,” says George Hill, who taught Williams at Bath Dance College at that time. Hill recalls a performance Williams’ class was preparing for, one she was desperate to be involved in but couldn’t rehearse for because of her filming schedule. That restraint didn’t seem to phase her; Williams made her own plan. “She came back in [after the shoot] and somehow knew everything,” Hill says.

“WHEN I STARTED BECOMING A WOMAN, I RESENTED ARYA BECAUSE I COULDN’T EXPRESS WHO I WAS BECOMING.”

Williams remembers the day she was handed a bra in the Game of Thrones costume trailer. It was a coming-of-age moment that, in the context of the show, marked the beginning of a distancing from, if not the fun of playing Arya Stark, then at least the way Williams identified with her. Up until the show’s final season, this image of a violent young girl – tomboyish, if old-fashioned, seems like an apt descriptor – was how she’d been seen by the world. “I think that when I started becoming a woman, I resented Arya because I couldn’t express who I was becoming,” she says. “And then I also resented my body, because it wasn’t aligned with the piece of me that the world celebrated.”

Her recollections of the show are wise but not calculated: you believe her when she says she had a great time working on Game of Thrones just as much as you do when she airs opinions that some may construe as contentious. Maybe that’s the byproduct of playing one character for such a long stretch of time: once you’re out the other side, they’re still lingering like a spectre, one that comforts and irks you in equal measure.

I ask her what parts of the show she misses. Then the silence comes, dead air filled faintly with the crackle of candles on the windowsills.

Eventually, she speaks: “Can I say none of it?”

To miss something would mean you wish for its return, which suggests a dissatisfaction with how we are in the here and now. That’s not a Maisie Williams MO.

“I don’t think it’s healthy [to miss it], because I loved it,” she says. “I look at it so fondly, and I look at it with such pride. But why would I want to make myself feel sad about the greatest thing that ever happened to me? I don’t want to associate that with feelings of pain.”

She’s dipping her toes into a return in other ways, having reprised the role of Arya (in voice only) for MultiVersus, a Warner Bros-produced video game in which characters from across the entertainment conglomerate’s IP battle it out in teams – you can watch her go head-to-head with Bugs Bunny. She enjoyed bringing an element of frivolity to a previously serious character.

But would she do it again on screen? She grins at the question. “I’m not saying it would never happen, but I’m also not saying it in this interview so that everyone goes…” – she gasps, and slips into the skin of a GoT superfan: “‘The spin-off! It’s coming!’ Because it’s not. It has to be the right time and the right people,” Williams adds, her voice warm, and winking a little now. “It has to be right in the context of all the other spin-offs and the universe of Game of Thrones.” But most importantly: “It has to be the right time for me.”

It’s approaching lunchtime, and we decide to get some fresh air. There’s a walk that starts in the bowels of the house’s back garden and takes us out onto a road where horse riders pass. It rained yesterday. “Will it still be muddy?” Williams asks Selby, who’s deep in fashion week preparation. He grimaces a little: affirmative. So she stretches on a pair of tan Rombaut trainers – her chic outdoor shoes – and we set out, hoping for the best.

The air feels grey, but the thorny path in front opens up into wide vistas blotted with auburn-splotched ponies, long rows of slanted solar panels and little houses in the distance. Taking stock of the mud situation, we walk and talk.

Williams compares the aftermath of Game of Thrones’ lengthy TV tenure to “being born again”. The opportunity to embody new characters on a similarly deep level excited her. Even the simple things, like dying her hair carnation pink, suddenly mattered. “I was rejecting a lot of the pieces of me and my image that I’d been so well known for,” she says. But it wasn’t a crisis moment. “It was more that I needed to express myself.” Later, she says the changes were both personally and professionally motivated, to allow those who may have typecast her to see that she’d changed. “I think that sometimes other people need a helping hand to see that you’re a different person,” she says, “and I don’t resent that.”

The hunger for acting persisted, but its connotations changed. “I quickly realised that it was more linked to the shame of being in one good thing and never doing anything again, rather than actually asking myself the question: what do you want to do now?” Williams says.

She wanted to work on a mini-series – something she knew the beginning and ending of – and found it with the well-received dark dramedy Two Weeks to Live, a Sky and HBO Max-broadcasted series about a young outcast avenging the death of her father by seeking out the murderer. It was shot and released within a neater timeframe than the 2020 movie The New Mutants, Marvel’s X-Men spin-off where she played a lead role. For a number of reasons, her first major movie took three years from the shoot wrapping for it to eventually reach cinemas. I ask her why, and as she looks up to answer the question, we realise the muddy patch ahead turns into practical marshland. “I think this is where the horses go so it really chews up the ground,” she says. Her trainers are caked in mud; my trousers are soaked. “Should we turn back?”

She has nothing but fond and “extremely fulfilling” memories of that project, shooting in Boston with stars like Anya Taylor-Joy and Charlie Heaton, in the summer of 2017. “We were all these young starlets who’d had a taste of that world,” she says. The double hit of the Disney-Fox merger paired with the pandemic are her hypotheses as to why the film didn’t do well; it was thrown into cinemas when no one was going out to watch films. Rumoured creative tension between the studio and director Josh Boone has also been listed as a reason for fans’ disdain for the project, which earned some aggressively negative reviews. Williams isn’t so bothered. “I can’t remember what publication it was, but someone said it was the worst Marvel movie ever made,” she says, letting out a tickling laugh. “I still feel kinda proud of that!”

Williams is a master at moving on now. The roles that she plays seem sacred only for a short time, before she makes the conscious decision to remove herself from the places they come from. What comes after – the response, the criticism, the hysteria – isn’t a part of it.

When we meet again nearly two weeks later, this time at the BFI on London’s Southbank, the presence of Pistol in her life seems to linger still. She turns up in a pinstripe grey suit with a cropped jacket and some sneakers, like a business exec coming to a meeting straight from the club. Her hair is as punk-ish as it was the last time.

She chose here because it feels like part of Pistol’s early history. The cast of the show – which includes model Iris Law, Enola Holmes star Louis Partridge as Sid Vicious, Australian actor Toby Wallace, and relative newcomer Anson Boon as Johnny Rotten – would hang out around here in between rehearsals at the nearby ITV building. It was the early days of the third lockdown. The city centre was dead still; Williams, like the rest of her co-stars, was returning to acting after a dormant stretch spent doing other things.

The show is still in the edit when we speak, so Williams tries to explain it to me. “It’s like an album,” she says; a “heart attack in every episode” body of work to be appreciated as a whole, rather than episodically. “It doesn’t owe you entertainment,” she teases, “but it is going to make you feel things.”

The process of winning this role started back in the late summer of 2020. Williams was in Paris, working on a number of jobs – including Selby’s debut fashion presentation – when her agent called, mentioning the project and Boyle’s attachment. He’d been on her hit list for a while. At the time, it felt like everyone was vying for a piece of Pistol, and by the time she returned to London, many of her male friends had sent in audition tapes for the lead roles. When her own time came, she read the suggested scene and sent back the tape. “I didn’t hear anything for ages,” she says. She’d half written off the concept of it happening, but then the NDA arrived, alongside a series of photos and stories of the character she’d be auditioning for: Jordan.

Born in East Sussex, Jordan made the commute from her comely English town to Vivienne Westwood’s Sex boutique in Chelsea practically every day, hair scorched with peroxide, dark makeup dragged to her temples, and wearing an assortment of leather and PVC outfits that made fellow passengers gawk. She was a pivotal voice at the advent of punk, and a strong participant in the band’s rise to fame. Her look was confrontational: she’d cycle to the train station sometimes wearing nothing but a membrane rain mac, breasts on show (paparazzi photos of Williams recreating this scene showed up last year).

Williams recalls those first conversations with the show’s casting directors: we want you to read for this role of Jordan, but you have to know there’s a lot of nudity, they said. She was hesitant at first, “just because of everything that happens in the industry and all the horror stories I’ve heard…I want to be in this show because I’m the best person to do this, not because I’m the only girl who’ll take her top off.”

She wrote a note back to them, airing her concerns. Later, her agent forwarded a clarification from Boyle that put her mind at rest. “Jordan was a political statement,” the note made her realise. “Her entire ethos was turning the male gaze in on itself, and it was overtly sexual in a way that made other people feel ashamed.” She could connect with the idea of being seen as a weirdo. “If I take my top off, I want to make other people feel uncomfortable.”

For her second audition, she joined a Zoom call with Boyle wearing a sheer KNWLS top with no bra underneath. She’d started that journey to embodying Jordan; Boyle seemed impressed by how greatly she’d leaned into the character. “And it worked out,” Williams says, grinning. “I got the part.”

“WHY WOULD I WANT TO MAKE MYSELF FEEL SAD ABOUT THE GREATEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO ME? ”

“It was the perfect opportunity for [Williams] to own a big character,” Boyle tells me. “She’s a great realistic actor, but Jordan [rejects] the very idea of everyday life. Maisie’s a bit like that herself. In a quieter, sweeter way, there’s a touch of Oscar Wilde about her, leading an awkward, self-conscious nation into being braver about sexuality, sensuality, gender, beauty…”

The show started shooting in March 2021 after a two-month rehearsal process, and the coterie of kids dove headfirst into a recreated version of 1970s London. Williams insisted she didn’t go method (“I definitely didn’t like, do any drugs”), but she revelled in the opportunity to detach herself from her own life for a while. Her phone – usually a constant fixture of set breaks on Game of Thrones, planning her social calendar – would stay in her trailer. In the era of Pistol, “you weren’t in constant contact with people, so I tried to calm my mind of modern-day stresses.”

She also had the unique opportunity to learn from Jordan, who consulted on the show and was the only non-immediate member of cast and crew allowed on set. “Maisie is somebody who never really wants to be encompassed by security,” Jordan tells me. “She wanted to push it all to the limit.” If Williams seemed cool on the surface, things weren’t so straightforward underneath: “It was a lot of pressure,” Williams recalls, “but honestly, I never needed to feel any type of way. Jordan was never confrontational. She just knew what was what, and if things weren’t right, she’d say.”

Williams was guided on the necessities of Jordan’s mannerisms. “I’m very emotive in the way that I communicate, but she was just constant. I had to stop moving my eyebrows while I was playing her, because she not only has the most incredible makeup, but her expression is painted – it never moves.” Boyle notes this acute attention to detail, calling Williams “precise, like a watchmaker”. In the beginning, the idea of Jordan being on set would panic her. “But then I realised, every single time, I know what I’m getting with her, and it’s me who’s unpredictable.” Chill, she told herself. “Stop thinking everything is either amazing or terrible. Just be.”

Williams is very good at just being now. The crises have passed, the pangs of anxiety about her post-blockbuster future are no more. Should Pistol propel her back into that realm, you reckon she could handle it all over again. But it’s not something she can control, and that hands-off attitude is all that can guide her.

She turns to me; those big, nocturnal eyes are darting and wide – the source of her weird thoughts and secrets. “Not to get really existential about it, but I do think our fate is predetermined. I see things in the future, and have hopes and aspirations, but you can’t take shortcuts.” Then Maisie Williams looks straight at me and smiles, content. “I feel like the path has always been set out. I just need to live it now.”

PISTOL premieres on Disney+ this may.

For an entire decade, her skill in wielding the sword electrified audiences the world over. She was the flamboyant Arya Stark in Game of Thrones, a child traumatized by adult vio- lence who, over the seasons, became a household heroine. Maisie Williams, who is now 23, did not enjoy a normal adolescence, but was plunged into a high-octane Hollywood existence. Last year she was back on the screen, both in the series Two Weeks to Live and the blockbuster The New Mutants. But she also took on the more glamorous role of ambassador to the house of Cartier for its new Pasha watch. Now a producer as well as an actress, highly committed to feminist and environmental causes, Williams is at last getting a taste of a more normal daily life for someone her age. When Numéro art interviewed her, in Paris where she was staying this summer, we found an actress in the full bloom of her youth, brimming with assured ideas and new ambitions.

Numéro art: You’ve been living in Paris for a few months. Why did you choose the the French capital?
Maisie Williams: I really like being here. I feel very inspired, much more than in London. Also, I’m working with my boyfriend [fashion-world entrepreneur Reuben Selby] on his brand’s first collection. We worked on it during lockdown and would like to do a fashion show at the Ritz. And since everything goes through Zoom, I’m much better off here.

Everyone knows you as an actress, especially in Game of Thrones, but your spectrum is much broader.
I’ve always considered myself a creative person. My true expression crosses several mediums. Limiting yourself to just one form of creativity doesn’t make sense to me. Music influences my acting, my personality is nourished by my relationship with fashion. The range of things that interest me is constantly expanding. Producing has taken a certain place in my life recently, and I’m planning on showcasing young artists. I’m also developing a series that I hope to fund before the end of the year. I’m writing it, producing it and intend to direct it. But it’s a long process! I’ve also been painting for two or three years. But I’m not forgetting my work as an actress – I’m going to start shooting a film about the true story of a ceramicist from the 1920s, which has helped me get into pottery.

Une réinterprétation de “L’Etoile” d’Edgar Degas. Tutu en tulle et satin brodé, Repetto. jupe à volants en cuir et tissu technique, et souliers, Louis Vuitton. Collants, Falke. Boucles d’oreilles “Juste un clou” en or jaune et diamants, et montre “Pasha” 35mm en or rose, Cartier. Sur la jupe, broche, Tétier Bijoux. Ruban, Mokuba. Au fond à gauche, pantalon en laine, Celine par Hedi Slimane.
What are you inspired by at the moment that fuels this creative whirlwind?
I’ve been listening to a lot of classical music. It puts me in a suspended state. Debussy. I find it very useful for refocusing. Creating such pure art is very powerful. I also set myself the goal of watching a movie a day. I’ve explored the films of Yorgos Lanthimos, Charlie Kaufman and Alex Garland, who wrote The Beach and also directed Ex Machina. I’ve watched a lot of Alma Har’el’s films, including her shorts.

You’re originally from Bristol, so you could have been in the series Skins, which was shot there and marked the 2000s with its trashy representation of teens.
I was eight when Skins started. I discovered it as a vintage series seven years later. [Laughs.] So I couldn’t have been cast. My debut in the audiovisual industry was very different from what you imagine when you think of actresses and actors from England. It’s very difficult to become an actress when you’re from a working-class family. You’re put in a “realistic” box and kept in reserve. Personally, I’ve never felt reduced to just one part of myself. I feel like I can walk into lots of companies and interest a wide variety of people. I have the ability to adapt to the people I meet, including professionally. I’m able to be charming, even if I don’t have social standing. In my opinion, this is the key to success. You have to know how to wear several hats.

Let’s talk about Game of Thrones, which ended in 2019. The role of Arya Stark brought you worldwide stardom, but most of all, you spent all your adolescence and more playing this tenacious character. Does the series seem like a time capsule to you today?

Yes it does. I see that part of my life as a very special mo- ment that will be frozen in time forever. From now on I’ll only be able to see it from the outside – I’ll never again know and understand my life as it was then. But it’s pretty healthy to think of it that way. What happened to me is incredibly bizarre, perhaps one of the most bizarre experiences a young person can have. I learned a lot about myself, I got out, that door is now closed. It’s a very powerful feeling.

Réinterprétation des “Hasards heureux de l’escarpolette” de Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Bustier à paniers et traîne en satin, Moschino. Jupe en taffetas, Patou. Minerve, Gucci. Bague, Tétier Bijoux. Boucles d’oreilles “Juste un clou” en or jaune et diamants, Cartier. Mules, Amina Muaddi. Au fond, chemise en flanelle de laine, Max Mara. À gauche, veste en laine, Acne Studios. Pantalon en laine, Boss.
Do you feel like you missed something from your youth and have reconnected with reality these past 18 months?

When the show ended, I had a strange feeling, as though I’d been pretending to be an adult for ten years when in fact I wasn’t. A few months ago, I downloaded TikTok, which is a very detailed gateway into my generation’s brain. What young people think and feel runs through this app in one way or another. I understood everything I’d missed as a teenager. While I was in lockdown, I connected with my younger “me,” the reckless 15-year-old – a recklessness I didn’t have back then. It was lovely. Now when I’m in contact with people my age, I see myself as less of a stranger. I’m more natural. This wasn’t the case in the world of movies and series, where I pretended to be an adult. I’ve been doing it for so long… It took me away from something. I was happy to finally take off my mask, so to speak.

Your generation seems more inclusive and more involved in the future of the planet than those that came before. Why would you say that is?
Our generation is more lucid, for sure. I feel respect and awe for the planet we live on. The future matters to us. It’s hard to say why, but we no longer accept certain behaviours. Why haven’t others before us taken up the challenge of kindness and inclusion? I can’t say. What’s certain is that, in the past ten years, the development of technology has been a milestone. Political struggles have been another. A new world is emerging, and many people are desperately clinging to the old one. There are so many unknowns. I feel it very strongly: we’re at a turning point. It’s like humanity was inside a pressure cooker. I think historians looking back at our era 200 years from now will consider it a time of major importance. In this context, extraordinary works can be born and art will hold a central place.

Réinterprétation du “Nu descendant un escalier” de Marcel Duchamp. Robe et pantalon en patchwork de cuir, Marni. Sandales, Louboutin.
What are your plans for the future?

I don’t plan much in my life. My goal is to make others happy, to help them discover new perspectives. As an actress, a lot of the things I do are difficult and intense. I’d like my contribution to the world to be more and more positive, and the least sad possible. I want to direct in order to accomplish my vision. I’ve been fascinated by this profession since I started as an actress.

Your character in Game of Thrones has often been associated with the word “badass,” meaning someone mighty and indestructible, a warrior. Do you claim it?

I’ll tell you the truth: to me, that word doesn’t mean much. Frankly, it’s kind of a crappy expression, right? I think people feel the need to put labels on women when they aren’t “feminine.” At any rate it’s one way of getting them to fit into a box. I know it’s supposed to be flattering and kind to say “badass,” but I think all women have extremely diverse layers within them. It’s true that I take on roles like Arya Stark, which are supposedly typically masculine. But you shouldn’t focus just on that. Women can be fragile, and that’s great too. “Badass” is used too often. We deserve better!

Réinterprétation du “Bacchus” du Caravage. Robe et jupe en crêpe de soie, Ann Demeulemeester. Bustier en toile de coton, Reuben Selby. Boucles d’oreilles “Juste un clou” en or jaune et diamants, et montre “Pasha” 35mm en or rose, Cartier.

With the hit series behind her, the 23-year-old British actress is ready to forge her own path, both with a new crop of films and as a brand ambassador for Cartier’s Pasha collection.

Last fall Maisie Williams turned heads during Paris Fashion Week, wearing matching outfits (and makeup) with her boyfriend, Reuben Selby, while sitting front row at Thom Browne. This year, the actor spent her summer in Paris, building partnerships with brands such as Cartier, Jacquemus, Courrèges, and awaiting her next chapter. “As an actress, the best advice I received was to put my personality aside in order to find one that matches each role,” she says. “In fashion, it’s different—you have to understand exactly who you are to be able to represent the brand and the look.”

It’s nearly impossible to forget Arya Stark’s personality. The ruthless warrior Williams played from ages 13 to 21 (eight seasons) on Game of Thrones was beloved among a cast of distinct, oversized personalities. Arya began as a mischievous young girl and grew into an avenging assassin—a tomboy surviving in a male-dominated world. And it can’t be easy to experiment with one’s masculine side while also becoming a young woman; nor to build one’s own character when playing someone else. With short hair and flattened breasts, Arya had to grow up very fast and learn how to protect herself. Williams too. Both Arya and Williams have silenced their critics in different ways: the pretenders to the throne for Arya, and the internet trolls that have disparaged Williams’ looks. Both subverted feminine stereotypes. We’ll never forget Arya discussing her period between battles, reminding Jon Snow that women continually see more blood than men. Now Williams is free to take back her own body and become herself.

For all that blood and violence, Williams is still not finished, and joins the Marvel Cinematic Universe in her role as Rahne in the latest X-Men movie, The New Mutants. Sitting amid the horror and superhero genres, The New Mutants is a real lockdown movie, perfect for a generation traumatized by the global pandemic. “The young mutants are in lockdown in a medical center, apparently to protect themselves and understand their powers, since they don’t know their nature or how big they can get,” she says. “My character is discovering her sexuality, falling in love with another girl, and they are protecting each other instead of fighting. It offers a new perspective to the Marvel movies. It’s somewhere in between The Breakfast Club and Stephen King.”

Coincidentally, confinement seemed to be a theme, with two other related projects from Williams this year. In the TV series Two Weeks to Live, she stars as Kim, a young woman who has been raised in violent doomsday-prepper isolation for years. She rejoins society to avenge the death of her father, and quickly finds herself mixed up in a prank gone horribly wrong. Williams also stars in The Owners, a horror film based on a graphic novel, in which a group of young lawless kids try to break into an old Victorian mansion owned by an elderly couple. “It’s set in the ’90s, so I created a style for it, full of denim and with bleached hair. Like everyone else I’m obsessed with ’90s style,” says Williams.

The actress has also recently invested her time and resources into her own production company. “I created Pint-Sized Pictures with two girlfriends to showcase unknown women’s talents,” she says. “We’re working on music videos, short and long films, and sometimes shows. As for the name, it’s because I’m short, the height of a pint!”

From supporting creative talents and mentoring young women to establishing her own style in acting and fashion, Williams is very much a product of her generation. Add to that animal activism, too. After the many years spent in Westeros, she’s determined to make up for lost time.

 

Maisie Williams for L’Officiel