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

Maisie attended the MCO: Monte-Carlo Gala For Planetary Health : Photocall event today, I have added the images to our gallery enjoy!

Maisie, you once described success as getting to learn things on set that you didn’t think yourself capable of. Has that influenced the characters you choose to play?

(Laughs) That’s funny that the young me was like, “I want to learn new skills!” I get what she was saying but these days I’ll do a film because I like the genre or because it’s something more tonally interesting to me. I think I’ve done a lot of big action stuff and a lot things that are somewhat surreal and hyperreal, so I guess I’m now really craving doing something which is a lot more authentic and a lot more honest to the girl who I am. I feel like there’s so many other sides to myself which I haven’t been able to show yet.

So you want to move away from these more physically demanding action roles?

I’m interested less in that and more in something like Blue Valentine, where it’s a very intense relationship, whether that’s romantic or just friendship or whatever, and it’s just very rooted within now. You just see two flawed people who are trying to navigate the world together — less physically draining and more emotionally draining, I guess.

And that kind of character can be just as, if not more, complex and interesting as one who is a fighter or a hero.

I think that there’s so much strength in women who aren’t the typically masculine view of powerful. I think this is something that Taylor Swift and Lana del Rey speak about all the time… So many of the women I’ve played have been overly masculine and they’ve been applauded for that, but there’s also a strength in a woman who isn’t shouting and screaming; a woman who is incredibly vulnerable and is just in some ways more complex. There’s a part of myself which is like that too, and I really try and learn about that. I’m very sensitive to my own emotions but also to other people’s, so the thought of creating a story between two people where there’s so many questions to be answered, that just really interests me.

Apparently when you played Arya Stark in Game of Thrones, you drew on a lot of your own feelings and past experiences. How do you go about channeling those emotions for a part?

Yeah. I think it’s called emotional memory, I can’t remember the exact term, but basically, you find a time in your life where you felt something similar to this and you try and understand why it made you feel that way and what it was about and why it affected you. Then you manipulate the situation that you’re doing on screen, and fit it into those very real memories and emotions. A lot of my real idols speak about their process and quite often speak about the art of pretend and imagination and being able to push that very far… But sometimes you can push it too far and things can become too real, and you can lose yourself a bit.

It sounds like it has the potential to be an almost torturous experience, reliving all those very real emotions.

It does… I think that because I was so young, I didn’t really know how to protect my own emotional state. I did that quite often where I dug up a lot of things that made me feel horrific emotions — and that’s what I ended up being praised for, you know? But I think now I’ve learned to protect myself more and not have to dig things up that hurt as much. I still do that, but there’s a way of doing that now which is more about the imagination.

How do you do that?

I think what really helps for me is when I can play a character who has an accent! Then it’s like a distance between yourself and the character. You can also do that with costume and make up… Being able to create this new person is ultimately something which really protects me at the end of the day: being able to remove all the make up and the wig and the clothes and leave it at work, and then go home and be myself again.

What about when the role isn’t so far removed from yourself? Does that make it harder to leave it on set?

Well, sometimes when you’re playing a teenage girl, like for example Mary from my last film The Owners, who is just like you or similar to you, you can get lost in it and it can become very honest and real. I think a lot of women, not necessarily me, but a lot of women can relate to her situation of giving so much to a relationship that is not giving enough back to you. So that film for me was a lot more gritty and… I don’t want to say realistic because horror movies rarely are, but there was something about it that was more authentic. But the role that really stuck with me in that way was Lydia from the film The Falling, It’s about an all-girls school in the sixties. Lydia’s best friend dies and after that, she sort of has these bouts of hysteria and starts becoming a negative influence on a lot of the girls around her.

What was it about the role that stuck with you?

It was such an interesting time in my life, I had left school but I just so desperately wanted to fit in, but nothing about me was ever supposed to fit in. I didn’t know if I was a grown up yet or if I was still a child. I was working on set on my own, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I think the combination of all of those things went into this film and I can see it all on my face. Looking back I feel bad for that girl because I was so lost. But for the movie, it’s so wonderful and it’s the proudest thing that I’ve ever been a part of… And I can say that now because I’m here and although I’m still a very emotionally sensitive person, I’m also a much happier person! (Laughs)

Emma Stone said that she used to think that being a sensitive person was a curse — but lately she is trying to use that as a compelling force for discovery and change.

Oh, she’s a longtime idol of mine! I have always related to a lot of the things that she’s said, so it’s very interesting that she said that. I’ve found that this sensitivity can be a curse and it can be really painful… I definitely am trying to manage my worries and anxieties and combat a lot of things with rationality and evidence. But when you are a panic prone person, that’s just like the battle of overcoming your mental illness. I try and meditate a lot. I meditate every night before I go to bed because otherwise I can’t sleep… So it’s just a lot of combating things with calmness and with reality. And the thing I think I’ve learned the most this year is being able to be empathetic.

In what ways?

I think the most painful thing is when I carry so much for other people. Like, I’m learning that you can be aware of someone’s feelings and help them, but you don’t have to take responsibility for them. You don’t have to hold this weight for them. Ultimately that’s their journey and there’s nothing you can do which will change that. People have to change things for themselves. Learning to not take the responsibility for other people’s emotions really does set you free.

 

Maisie Williams interviews for The Talks.

For eight years, the British actress was one of television’s most beloved swordwielding, baddie-slaying teenage anti-heroines. Her next big act: mutant, producer, a champion for up-and-coming creatives, and possibly the next most powerful woman in entertainment and the arts. Here, an exclusive close-up.

Even among superheroes, the X-Men have long been a metaphor for growing up, fighting oppression and finding one’s own space within a society that hates and fears them. Perhaps you’ll find that those themes sound too familiar for comfort in 2020, given everything that’s been going on in the year so far.

The same themes are amplified in the upcoming (and long delayed) instalment in the X-Men series, The New Mutants, released in cinemas recently. The film is a horror-tinged spin-off from that universe focusing on a younger set of superheroes-in-training.

Among them: Rahne Sinclair aka Wolfsbane, a teenage mutant with lycanthropic powers who – in a nutshell – was raised in an ultra-religious setting. (Her father was a reverend, strict to the point of abusive to correct any perceived “sins” so much so that he led an angry mob to hunt her down when her powers began to manifest.)

And few are as befitting to give depth to this complex and troubled character as the inimitable Maisie Williams, aka the British actress who – throughout her teenhood – won the world over playing anti-heroine Arya Stark in the HBO epic that was Game of Thrones (GOT).

“Rahne is a stark contrast to the characters I have played before. She is sensitive, she is fragile and nervous, she is uncomfortable in her own skin, and the opportunity to play someone with a physicality like that was something that I didn’t want to miss out on,” says Williams, now 23, in an e-mail interview ahead of our exclusive photo shoot. “When I was a teenager, I used to feel very uncomfortable in my own skin and I know Rahne feels that way.”

It’s no secret that Williams has struggled with bullying, especially when she had returned to school after filming a couple of seasons of GOT. Never mind that her much-loved character was a young noble-turned-deadly assassin, all to right heinous wrongs, Robin Hood-style. These days though, she’s doing the fighting on her own terms.

As is the case with many of the creatives of her generation, she has her fingers in many pies. She’s also a film producer and start-up founder, most notably for Daisie, an app she helped establish in 2017. Officially made public last year, it’s meant to be a platform that emphasises transparency to make it easier for up-and-coming creatives of different mediums (fashion, art, photography, film, music and more) to cross-pollinate and showcase their work.

“WHEN I WAS A TEENAGER, I USED TO FEEL VERY UNCOMFORTABLE IN MY OWN SKIN AND I KNOW RAHNE FEELS THAT WAY.” – MAISIE WILLIAMS

While she’s keeping her plans for it on the down-low, it’s hard to ignore how an endeavour like it feels particularly relevant at a time when multiple cultural movements are emerging to question and rebalance traditional power dynamics.

Read the manifesto on the app’s website that talks about how industry gatekeepers “hold all the power and select only those whom they deem talented enough to advance to the next level… It’s a divisive and alienating way to maintain the status quo and we stand with many others demanding radical transformation”.

“As an actor you have freedom, but with certain boundaries. At the end of the day, you’re still saying someone else’s words,” says Williams. “That’s why I’m so drawn to producing. I would love to create a show or film or anything from the ground up. That way you have full creative control of the set, costumes, words, lighting; you can orchestrate everything.”

It’s often said that actors struggle with being typecast as their most iconic characters, but one gets the sense that Williams – with her take-charge ethos and genre-spanning projects – is doing just fine post GOT. Aside from The New Mutants, her next television role comes in the British dark comedy Two Weeks to Live, scheduled to launch this autumn. In it, she plays Kim Noakes, a young woman who decides to re-enter real life after years of isolation and survivalist techniques she’s had to endure, imposed by her paranoid mother.

Her projects outside of film are likewise demonstrative of her zeal. Of late, she’s been something of a fashion darling, stealing the spotlight at Fashion Week where she’s a front-row regular at brands like Thom Browne and – for Fall/Winter 2020 – Givenchy. Even more recently, she was made one of five young ambassadors of Cartier’s Pasha de Cartier timepiece for achieving success due to her “differences, creativity, connection, multidisciplinary talents, and generosity”.

The most beguiling part about this pint-sized mogul-in-the-making (fun fact: her production company is called PintSized Pictures) however might just be that she doesn’t seem overly obsessed with all that acclaim. “That’s the beauty of being an overachiever,” she says. “Even if the acting ended tomorrow, there are so many things in life I want to pursue. I’ve always wanted to make dolls – maybe out of clay? And then I can make tiny clothes for them.”

Photography Rob Kulisek, Styling Lisa Jarvis Photography Assistants Alban Diaz & Jamie Finnegan Videography Amanda Louise Macchia Styling Assistant Nina Abdelfettah Hair Hei Tai Cheung Makeup Aurelia Liansberg/Wise & Talented, using Dior, Marc Jacobs & Absolution Cosmetics Manicure Sylvie Vacca Casting & Production Tasha Tongpreecha Production Manager Kate Kudinova

Williams is embracing a bright future post Game of Thrones – and the chance to explore her distinctive take on fashion

About 15 minutes into my interview with Maisie Williams, she jumps up from her seat to close the blinds. “Wait, there’s a woman taking a picture,” she says, arching a substantial eyebrow. A fan has pressed a camera against the kitchen window at the house that the 23-year-old is renting for the summer in Paris’s first arrondissement. I think it’s worrying. She says it’s normal. Within a minute, she’s ready to resume our discussion. “I’m OK, we’re all good. What were we saying?”

We were talking, coincidentally, about the many ways in which starring in the television phenomenon Game of Thrones has changed her life. About the fame, and the fact that everyone from David Cameron to Madonna has watched Williams grow up on screen, and can recognise her as Arya Stark, the Needle-wielding heroine of Westeros. And we were discussing the rich list of new projects – from a Marvel Universe film, to an ambassadorship for Cartier’s new Pasha de Cartier watch – that Williams has managed to land since the show finished last year.

 

“For me now it’s all about variety,” she says, acknowledging that after a role as defining as Arya, she could have easily been typecast for life. “I want to work on things that feel different, exciting and fresh. I don’t want to do the same thing over and over again, because there are so many different opportunities in film-making. I want to experience them all.” Her predicament: how do you move on from the role of a lifetime, if the role of a lifetime came at the very beginning of your life?

As such the shows and films in which you will see Williams this autumn couldn’t be more diverse. Before lockdown (which she spent holed up making audition self-tapes and watching Normal People along with three housemates in London), she had completed The Owners, a horror film about a home invasion co-starring Rita Tushingham, as well as the upcoming Sky comedy series Two Weeks To Live, with Fleabag’s Sian Clifford. Additionally, The New Mutants, which Williams filmed back in 2017, is finally out, representing her first venture into the comic-book world.

“The New Mutants, for me, was all about the character,” she explains. “I got to play a timid girl who is very different from everyone else that I usually get asked to play. Two Weeks To Live is tonally very different; it’s a dark comedy, and I’d never been on a comedy set before. Then The Owners is a psychological thriller set in the 1990s in the UK, so all the outfits and my hair are bonkers.”

 

 

Williams had taken on some small parts during her time on Game of Thrones (a Doctor Who gig here, a few short films there) and emerged from the show at 22, with almost a decade of experience under her belt. But after an eight-year stint as Arya, she was nervous about auditioning again. She realised that she needed to put herself out there, rather than wait and see what would come to her.

“It is almost harder because I had never been told no,” she says. “The second thing that I ever auditioned for was Game of Thrones, and that launched my career. There’s always competition, it doesn’t matter how much you’ve done, you will always lose out on roles. The industry is built upon rejection. I’m definitely learning that now – how to overcome the rejection and not see it as a personal thing. But learning to be told no is really difficult as someone who’s an established actor. No one’s got time for you when you’re like, ‘Oh I didn’t get the part in this thing.’ They’re like, ‘You just came off the most successful TV show of the decade, can you hang on a minute?'”

Williams grew up in Bristol, the youngest of four siblings, and was raised mainly by her mother after her parents divorced. Performing, she says, was all she ever wanted to do, as long as she could swallow the nerves. “I was such an attention seeker, I just always wanted to goof around with my family and make them laugh,” she remembers. “When I first started doing auditions, I went on the train from Bristol up to London, and when it stopped at Reading I would cry. I would cry until we got to Paddington, and then I’d be fine. The pressure was so much, I’d cry and think, ‘I don’t want to do it, I don’t want to go in.’ Then I’d do the audition and have the best time ever.”

The finale of Game of Thrones was watched by more than 19 million people – all of whom are undoubtedly grateful that Williams did pluck up the courage to enter that casting room. Her character transformed over the course of the show from 11-year-old tomboy princess of Winterfell, to faceless god, to Night King-slaying saviour of the Seven Kingdoms, gathering more fans with every show. Williams filmed 59 episodes, won an Emmy and toured the world with the cast.

“At the beginning, when I was young, I found it so exciting when people would stop me in the street,” she explains of the effect the fame has had on her. “I was so excited to just be famous. But the years go by and it gets less and less exciting. Then you start to feel like you’re selling more of your private life and you don’t have ownership over anything and people want to exploit that. I was very lucky that I had so many people protecting me, and I have such a great support network of people.”

Williams says that if she hadn’t had her mother chaperoning on set, and true friends in the cast -particularly Sophie Turner, who played her on-screen sister, Sansa Stark, and was herself only 14 when filming began – she would have struggled with life in the spotlight. “I struggled anyway, really, we all did,” she admits. “But what was so wonderful was that we had so many actors on the show who had been acting for a long time. They gave incredible advice and let me rant on about, ‘Oh, I feel my words were misinterpreted in this interview.’ I was surrounded by people who could tell me, ‘It just happens, you have to let it go, it’s not a big deal.’ That made it all a lot easier.”

Co-star Kit Harington, who played Williams’s older half-brother, Jon Snow, on the show is full of praise for how well Williams and Turner handled themselves. When, in June 2018, he married co-star Rose Leslie, who played the alluring wildling Ygritte, his on-screen sisters were there. “They are like my surrogate younger siblings,” he says. “I found myself [recently] talking to Maisie with great adoration and love and care, but with a tone to my voice that was not right, and it made me realise she is not the kid I remember, she is very much an adult. I love that woman.”

Williams says that while she’s happy to have moved on, grown up and found new beginnings, she savoured every last moment of the Game of Thrones experience. “I was really careful in the final season to not take it for granted,” she recalls. “Even on the cold, ridiculous nights – I remember being hung from these ropes in an entirely leather outfit in the rain and then it started snowing… you’ve just got to laugh, haven’t you?”

Since leaving the show, Williams says, she’s also been able to crystallise and enjoy her sense of personal style more. Where once she couldn’t change her appearance too drastically, now she is relishing the opportunity to switch hair colours and make-up looks regularly. Often she coordinates with her 23-year-old boyfriend, the Contact model agency co-founder Reuben Selby, and the couple might be pictured on the front row at Paris Fashion Week with matching candyfloss-pink hair, or sweeps of red eyeshadow, or in his ‘n’ hers bouclé suits.

While staying in Paris, the pair attended Jacquemus’s show in a barley field, wearing beige linen suits and face masks. She arrives on our shoot in Saint-Denis wearing cycling shorts and one of Christopher Kane’s ‘More Joy’ baseball caps, before whirling through looks by Emporio Armani and Dior.

Something she likes about the Pasha de Cartier watch that she endorses (and duly strokes on her wrist throughout the interview) is that “it’s never been specifically gendered,” she says.

“And I would say that my style is very much like that. I have a lot of influence from when I was growing up with my brothers and the way that they would dress. We’re all becoming more accustomed to the fluidity of clothing and identity, and I really try to carry that with me as much as I can.”

Williams joins actors Rami Malek, Troye Sivan, Willow Smith and Jackson Wang in the advertising campaign for Cartier. She says that she feels like ‘a kid in a candy store’, and she can’t believe her luck that fashion ambassadorships can be a bonus role for actors these days. She’s always loved clothes, but learning about her style and what she actually likes, she says, came via many rounds of red-carpet appearances as a teenager. Looking at each year’s series premiere for Game of Thrones, you can track her style evolution via minidresses with tights and boots (2013), through a phase of full, ladylike skirts (2016) to where she has settled now.

“I was always curious but I didn’t know how to represent myself,” she explains. “I was very fearful of being judged and I was too scared to express myself. I have learnt to embrace who I am and have my own opinions and style myself the way that makes me feel good and proud. Growing up, it’s anyway hard to experiment for fear of being judged, but also being in the public eye made it that much more terrifying. I’m still learning now, but really in the last 18 months I think my style has become more refined.”

Another creative outlet that Williams is ‘still figuring out’ is social media. She has switched her approach in recent weeks, she says, to stop herself from becoming a ‘performative activist’.

“When I was a teenager, social media was exciting and new and you could invent yourself online,” she explains. “I wanted to share everything like my friends did. Then obviously I got a much larger following, so there was pressure to not say anything stupid.”

At about the age of 14, she found it harder to cope with the noise online from fans and critics. “I went through a time when I found it difficult to listen to people’s opinions of me constantly,” she continues. “When you are 14, people still want you to be a kid, but you’re also trying to be a grown-up. And you don’t know which one you’re supposed to be and you’re stuck in your body. That was a difficult time.

“I became really outspoken, but it was only because I was very insecure. I learnt to just speak about things I felt really passionate about and didn’t get involved in every single political issue, but now I’ve come to the point where I think there’s all this performative activism, where it’s like it only counts if you can post about it. Isn’t it better that I’m just learning and being a better person, rather than talking about it on social media?”

Williams’s self-awareness is one of her endearing qualities – Nina Gold, the casting director on Game of Thrones, described her as an ‘old soul’ when she met her, at 12. Ask most 23-year-olds what’s next for them and they might shrug and say ‘dunno’. Williams gives the shrug, but rattles off a very specific list of goals – from starring in a film that allows her to experience the full critics’ festival circuit (she’s never been to Cannes, and feels she’s attended other festivals ‘only as a fan’), to working with more female directors, to producing something of her own that is a commercial success. You don’t have to be a Three-Eyed Raven to know she’s going to achieve them all.

“I do have a bit of a plan for the first time,” she grins, her huge hazel eyes opening up. “Through my whole career I haven’t set any goals, and it’s been fine, but recently I’ve been like, ‘OK, let’s try and manipulate this situation we’re in and nail down some things I want to do.’ It’s been really helpful, even from a mental health perspective, feeling like there’s some sort of direction. I’m not just floating through the world and waiting to see. Now I’ve got an idea.”

The 23-year-old New Mutants star talks to Craig McLean about making revenge comedy ‘Two Weeks to Live’, why she wouldn’t jump to watch ‘Game of Thrones’, and why women have to create their own stories to escape tokenism

Williams plays a young woman, Kim, who’s grown up in the remote Scottish Highlands with her mum Tina (Fleabag’s Sian Clifford). But when life off the grid and killing deer for dinner starts to lose its lustre, Kim heads out into the real world, pursued by her mum. With what it seems is characteristic no-BS playfulness, she admits it was the right thing at the right time for someone who started on GoT when she was 13.

“It probably wasn’t the most challenging thing that I’ve done. But I guess that’s also why it was great timing, because I’d just come off 10 years of HELL!” Williams hoots, leaning her face into her laptop. “No, 10 years of joy!” The six-part show was, clearly, a blast to make. She and Clifford, who has just won the Female Performance in a Comedy Bafta for Fleabag, clicked instantly, bonding over their shared experience of playing fan-favourite characters and the challenge of moving on from those.

“When you watch us onscreen, you can just tell we’re having a lot of fun. That’s an infectious thing for the audience. That’s what’s it’s all about, right? Moving the audience and them being able to feel what you’re giving, and I think this show really does that. And for me, it’s different to anything I’ve done before.”

This explains why she hasn’t use her global GoT fame to springboard into Hollywood blockbusters, as her Westeros bestie Sophie Turner has done with the X-Men franchise. “There are so many parts of the industry that I’ve never really experienced. And I didn’t want to price myself out of that, or run away from the opportunity to work on something like this.

“I’m sure every single person who was on Game of Thrones has been asked: what are you gonna do now?” she wonders in her relaxed, slangy speaking voice. “There’s always the accusation, or query, as to whether you’re going to do anything that was that successful again. But what we did on Game of Thrones was unprecedented, and if you try and do something like that again, you’re only gonna fail. Because that sort of thing only comes around once. A big box office smash viewed by millions and millions of people around the world – it’s never gonna top that. So that’s just not a fulfilling thing to go after.”

Two Weeks To Live, then, was a smart pivot, one that enabled her to flex comedy muscles while also show off her old fighting and stunt skills. “This was a really intense shoot, three, four shots per scene, and snappy and quick. You miss out on opportunities like this if you’re just trying to go for status.”

Williams clearly has a calm, cool head for her business, and for herself, and always has – I met her on the Northern Irish set of GoT when she was 14 and she was as unflustered and down-to-earth as they come, even as Thrones mania was exploding around the world. As she advanced through her teenage years, she navigated child superstardom with apparent ease, even as she was becoming one of the best-paid teenage actors in the world – by the final season, she and Turner were reportedly earning £158,000 per episode. But there were no tales of excess or indulgence, no paparazzi shots of drunken stumbles outside nightclubs.

Her mum, she says, deserves much of the credit for shepherding her through onrushing fame, but at the same she time herself was “always so aware” of the possible pitfalls.

“Even when I was 12, people were like: ‘Ooh, are you gonna get a drug habit and ruin your life?’ That is the problem, I guess: the fact that you’re doing interviews when you’re 12 and no one’s ever addressing why that’s a really difficult and dangerous thing for you to do. Everybody wants you to have an opinion on something when you don’t know who you are yet.

“So I was really quick to understand that: these people aren’t my friends. People just want to go where the money and drama is. And I wanted to really protect myself.” So she had to “grow up really fast” while also recognising that that “can also mess you up. It’s a minefield [and] it’s a challenge every single day.”

As for her next professional steps, she’s looking… and looking. One area of firm interest is women-led projects. “Women telling female stories [is] really important, I think, if you want to create something that really does speak to women and that is really emotionally in tune, and powerful. We’re going through this phase of hiring women as, like, a token – they’re always onscreen, but they’re never behind the camera. There’s just a real mismatch there, because how can you expect a male director to know what it’s like to be a woman?”

She mentions The Falling, a critically acclaimed indie by Carol Morley that she made when she was 15. “I’m so proud of that, and I would love to do something in that vein. That’s a movie I would have watched if I wasn’t in it. Everyone sees me as, you know, 16, which is cool. But I mentally don’t feel like a 16-year-old, and it would be nice for me to play a woman who is as complex as I am.”

Female writers and directors with a possibly French-language project in need of a star who’ll bring talent, smarts and budget? You know who to call.

Two Weeks to Live starts on Sky One on Wednesday 2 September