Maisie Williams has opened up about her hopes for a second season of Two Weeks To Live.

The Game of Thrones star, returning to TV for the first time since the HBO show ended, recently told NME what she would like to see for her character Kim if the series were to return.

“I think that her little mind would be completely blown by so many things,” Williams said. “I’d love to see her experiencing tribute acts. They’re so weird and we don’t think they are.

“First of all, she’d have to be introduced to Elvis Presley or whoever and then she’d have to understand that he’s dead and this person is just acting like him. It just makes no sense. Or I’d love to see her looking at doll’s houses.”

Williams continued: “The fact that we keep houses in our houses that are full of really tiny things?” she says. “People actually put in wiring and plumbing and shit like that, it’s just so extra. Kim really does call everything out, like, ‘Why do we do this? It’s so strange.’”

In a five-star review of Two Weeks To Live, NME said: “One of 2020’s best new shows, Two Weeks To Live leans into the witty humour of classic British comedies like Hot Fuzz and Brassic.

“There’s attitude and the story rolls along with a real swagger, but it never does the expected or takes itself too seriously. Season one’s final episode leaves the door wide open for a second series and lays to rest the ghost of Arya Stark.”

At the centre of the new Sky One series Two Weeks To Live is a young misfit called Kim.

Taking on the role is Bristolian Maisie Williams, 23, who is famous the world over for playing Arya Stark in HBO series Game of Thrones, which she starred in from 2011 to 2019.

Asked whether there was a time when she herself has ever felt like a misfit, Williams doesn’t hesitate to bring up being a child star.

“You know, I was famous when I was 12 years old, and that makes you feel really weird!” she says, laughing.

Comedy drama Two Weeks To Live is very different to Game of Thrones – and, indeed, anything else on our screens right now.

We learn Kim was just a little girl when her father died in murky circumstances, and has since lived a remote rural life with her survivalist mother, Tina (Sian Clifford).

Now all grown up, she takes on a secret mission to honour her father’s memory – but has no idea the danger and chaos that awaits (clue: it involves Kim, Tina, and new pals Nicky (Mawaan Rizwan) and Jay (Taheen Modak), on the run from murderous gangsters and the police).

Luckily, though, Kim has some incredible skills up her sleeve.

Here, we find out more from stellar cast members Williams, Rizwan and Modak.

STAND-OUT STORY

Williams first read the script for Two Weeks To Live – written by Gaby Hull, who was behind ITV’s Cheat – a few years ago when it was a film, not a TV show.

“I thought the context of the world coming to an end and the fear of that was really intriguing; it triggers people’s fight or flight and to see how people react is interesting, especially with Kim,” notes the star.

“Now the world around us has changed, it’s become something which is very topical. We just couldn’t have predicted that way back then.” Modak, who’s a relative newcomer (but you might recognise him from ITV drama The Bay), jumped at the chance to have a job – but especially when he saw the cast involved.

“I would have been an idiot to turn down such an opportunity,” he quips.

“And then, they’re just such short, fun, jam-packed episodes. They’re packed with so much emotion and comedy and action, obviously – from Maisie’s side and Sian’s side specifically. And there was just a lot of fun, but then it’s grounded in relationships, between the four of them.

“For me, it was the combination of quite relatable characters in quite extraordinary situations,” adds Rizwaan on the appeal of the script.

Just seeing how these characters react in extreme situations, and the comedy that comes from that, I really enjoyed reading.
ACTION PACKED

This is a stunt-filled series, and Williams recalls a day on set when one scene went a bit wrong.

“We filmed it at night-time, and so we were quite tired – and when you’re tired is when mistakes come.

“There’s this part where I kick Sean Pertwee [who plays a villain] in the chest, and I caught him just in the chin and the lip and made him bleed. I felt really bad about that!” Rizwan, a writer and comedian who started out making YouTube sketches jokes: “Nicky just screams a lot, bless him.

“There was a shootout car sequence… Maisie, I genuinely thought you were going to fall out the boot because you were literally hanging out the car!

“I don’t know how you were doing it. I was genuinely terrified. So, no acting on my part for that scene.”

FUNNY MOMENTS

As well as plenty of action, there’s plenty of laughs in store too.

“I’d say the comedy is pretty deadpan, slightly crude,” enthuses Williams.

“Tina is very cutting, and Jay and Nicky are kind of these bumbling idiots that she gets to put down all the time.” She continues: “It’s such a good breakout role for Taheen. He absolutely smashed it; his delivery makes me laugh so much. There’s not a single element of these performances that I don’t enjoy on-screen.” Modak confides he found the comedy “very challenging, especially in a dark comedy like this where you’re trying not to tell jokes”.

“It’s almost like you have a sixth sense; you’re aware that there is a gag there but you’re trying to be deadly serious, you’re trying to be as honest and earnest as you can be, especially when you’re playing a character like Jay.

A lot of the stuff he says is pretty absurd and people watching will know that, but you’ve got to play it straight and honest.
GROWING UP

Game Of Thrones fans should look out for a Game Of Thrones reference, too.

“We just wanted to do a little nod [to Arya],” says Williams. “That’s the role I’m known for and her most defining feature is how she can fight so we wanted to add a little Easter Egg.”

Kim and Arya are both kick-ass characters for Williams to have on her CV, but what’s different is that “Kim is allowed to be a young woman and take her time to find her place in modern-day society and that’s something that Arya wouldn’t be able to comprehend”.

“It does feel like an evolution for myself,” the star adds.

“All of the wonderful things about Arya felt very familiar when playing Kim but it’s nice to play someone who’s more my age, more feminine and gets some romance.”

Talking of romance, Williams teases more about Kim’s budding relationship with Nicky.

“She’s watched a couple of movies and understands love stories even though the only films that she has seen are like Braveheart, which is quite a sad existence!” she elaborates.

“She doesn’t have any of the shy, awkward, embarrassment that we often get when we engage with someone we are attracted to. I’ve always felt very forward in trying to say exactly what I mean, so it was really nice to play a character who does that.”

Two Weeks To Live launches on Sky One on Wednesday, September 2

Source

Two Weeks To Live, a brand new Sky original comedy, starring Maisie Williams, Sian Clifford, Mawaan Rizwan and Taheen Modak starts 2 September on Sky One.

Glamour-

We are calling it, Two Weeks to Live will be THE TV addiction this autumn. With Maisie Williams and Fleabag’s Sian Clifford starring in it, the comedic timing is perfection, so strap yourselves in for the comedy action series that will arrive on Sky One and Now TV this autumn.

EXCLUSIVE: First look at Maisie Williams and Sian Clifford in Sky’s Two Weeks to Live

Maisie stars as Kim, a young girl who watches her father die under mysterious circumstances and is taken in by her mother Tina, played by Sian, to live a remote isolated existence. The pair become survivalists as Tina tells Kim of conspiracy theories that the outside world is a dangerous and petrifying place.

Whilst the safety of this rural life is enough for Tina, her daughter has other ideas and as she escapes to the real world and finds herself on her first night out – heels and all – in a proper boozer. Things take a turn when she meets brothers Nicky (Mawaan Rizwan) and Jay (Taheen Modak who will SLAY you with his one liners). The pair prank Kim and pretend the world is ending in two weeks. With that in mind, Kim sets off to avenge the death of her father.

The action that ensues is nothing short of side-splitingly hilarious as the group unite and go on the run, not only from some scary AF gangsters but the police as well. But what the gangsters and the police don’t account for is Kim is well-versed in badassary after a childhood shooting guns and learning how to survive.

Here the show’s stars Maisie Williams and Sian Clifford give us an exclusive first insight into the show which is basically Killing Eve on acid…

Before we go any further, we need to talk about how incredible your comedic timing is Sian and Maisie you are SO funny in this, you had me laughing from scene one…
Sian: Stop it! Don’t stop! I am just so grateful you think I do! I am a neurotic actor, like most, and I don’t want to dive down a hole of self-deprecation, but I grew up doing musical comedy where my heroes were people like Imelda Staunton. But I am not a technical actor at all, I am not strategic about it, it just happens and its mostly just down to the writing!

Maisie: I’m so glad that you like it. It’s a good opening scene! And I’m glad that you like the opening because I just don’t think I am funny, because I’m not funny. (SIDE NOTE: Maisie is being self deprecating she’s VERY funny.)

What drew you to Two Weeks to Live in the first place, Maisie?
Maisie: It was a really sad story and it was a really sad journey for this girl, but it was also really funny. But even in all of this combat training and fighting, I thought that it was still really humorous. It was so much fun! I don’t think that I have ever worked on a set that was just so freeing and so smiley because the content that we’re shooting is lighthearted and fun, everyone needs to be able to have that fun on set and feel like they’re not being judged. So, the crew were just smiling and laughing and Al, our director, made sure that there was just fun and games going on at all times. For me as an actress it was the first time I got to be on a set that was like that because on dramas everyone’s just very morose. I felt like as an actor I was drinking in this new world of comedy that I had never really got to be a part of before.

What were the funniest moments on set?
Sian: There were so many! When it was the four of us on set together, they were the best days – we’ve become so close! We would sing a lot with each other. We got into this competition of singing I Will Always Love You, the Whitney Houston version, and every now and then without setting it up someone would go for the ‘bark’ the massive key change moment and we would sing it in someone’s face. That made me the hardest when Taheen would go for the high note without any prior warning. Doing that early morning on set, freezing cold is why I do my job!

Maisie: There’s so many moments like that. Those guys were so much fun, and we really did the whole shoot together. It was just the four of us every single day. I just loved it. It was amazing.

Did the combat training give you new faith in the strength and power of your body, Maisie?
Maisie: I suppose it really does because I think like so many people, I struggle to do exercise, and because I can’t run very far or I can’t do these things, or I feel like I can’t, I always think that I’m weak. I think that reflects on something on the inside because I can’t run a marathon, which is not a big deal, you know? A lot of people can’t. But I think when I am doing fight scenes, I really can do it and I thrive. I’ll do it until six in the morning or however long it takes.

Was there a time when you were doing the stunts on set for this show where it went a little bit wrong?
Maisie: There’s a scene in a sleazy bar in the basement of this guy’s house, there were bottles of booze everywhere, we were throwing bottles and I think I got like three or four bottles on the head. I was really sad about it but when you’re on a film set, you don’t want to cry like a child. It was late and emotions were running high, but I was like, ‘I’m not going to cry because it doesn’t solve anything!’ The night after I was doing high kicks to the gangster, Jimmy’s chest and I really did clip him on his gold grill, on his teeth. Sian told me he was bleeding from his mouth – he didn’t cry so I am glad I didn’t cry the night before!

Do you think you could be a survivalist in real life?
Maisie: I think that I could live off grid and I’d really enjoy it, but the whole like manual labor thing I am not sure! I’d love to get away from the technology and my phone, and just sit in the middle of a field. But when it came down to it – I wouldn’t want to kill an animal, no way! I guess you could find lots of berries and things like that but if the field was looking a bit vast and barren, then I’d be crying. I would be so upset.

Sian: Everyone wants to think they are brilliant in an emergency and when one hits you are paralysed. Even with the pandemic you see people retreat or be super productive and for me, I retreated because of the time I was at in my life, I needed to. This has been a call to get back to basics. In our super high-tech world, we have forgotten about the beauty of simplicity in life. It’s brought everything into sharp focus. But in terms of nature, I love being outside, I loved filming the scenes in the woods and the cabin. It was pretty dire conditions for the crew rather than us. It was in December, it was really muddy, really cold and you couldn’t get cars to the top of the hill and they had to drag equipment up the hill, so it was much harder for them than us!

What did your characters teach you about yourselves as individuals?
Maisie: I was just going to say that I’m really scared of gun noises which is quite a normal fear, right? I guess, Kim really sees just the truth in everything and sees things for what they are and is almost very childlike in that sense. Whereas I am the queen of overthinking everything so to play someone who doesn’t think twice was really freeing. To just shut your brain up, do the scene, have some quiet within yourself, get outside of your head and just be in the room I think is a great lesson for me. And I hadn’t thought about it until you asked me that question, but maybe I should be doing a little bit more of that in my life.

Sian: Not to be so controlling! If you love someone let them go – all the classic troupes, she lives by. She needs to let Kim go, that she is old enough and wise enough for her get by on her own. I am so far from that world (of being a parent) still. It taught me not to be so controlling of each other and that goes both ways from child to parent and parent to child. Our families are the people who ruffle our feathers the most and the people we want to prove yourself to them the most and that doesn’t change no matter what age you are!

What do you think it taught you about your relationship with your parents and playing from this mother daughter relationship with each other?
Maisie: I think Tina is so hard on Kim, and my Mum was so accepting of me. Kim sees the world for what it is and doesn’t overthink things and pushes forwards whereas the outcome with me is that I am overthinking everything. With my Mum anything that I do will be enough and will be good enough and that’s really wonderful, but then you end up putting a lot of pressure on yourself, right? Because you’re like no matter what this person will be very accepting so then you’re just trying to please yourself. That’s probably why I’ve become so internal and everything’s become so internalized. But with Kim and Tina, it’s very different!

Two Weeks to Live will be available this autumn on Sky One and streaming on NowTV

Kim Stokes (Maisie Williams), a strange young misfit who was just a little girl when her father died in murky circumstances. Following his death, her mother Tina whisked her away to a remote rural life of seclusion and bizarre survival techniques.

Now all grown up, Kim sets out into the real world for the first time to begin a secret mission of honouring her father’s memory. Meanwhile, socially awkward Nicky isn’t good at impressing girls, and when Kim walks into his and brother Jay’s local pub, it sets in motion a chaotic series of events that puts all their lives in danger. Who would have thought a few drinks and an ill-judged prank could go so violently wrong?

Tina arrives in search of Kim and the unlikely crew soon find themselves on the run from murderous gangsters and the police with a massive bag of stolen cash. But Kim is no ordinary fish out of water – she’s more like a great white shark who knows how to strip a Smith & Wesson SDVE pistol in 6 seconds flat and skin a deer to make a sleeping bag whilst perfectly reciting the lyrics to ‘I Will Survive’. With her in their team, they might all just get out of this alive.

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.