Maisie Williams Did Not Exactly Love Playing Arya Stark on ‘Game of Thrones’

HBO’s hit fantasy series Game of Thrones produced one of the most popular characters in television history. The actress was not too pumped about it.

Maisie Williams co-starred as Arya, a nine-year-old Stark girl at the start of the series who’s forced to grow up fast, and she endures countless tragedies and triumphs over the course of the show’s eight seasons.

And while millions of fans across the globe enjoyed watching Arya’s exploits each week, Williams didn’t always love playing the part.

She recently revealed that she “resented” the character while she was growing up on the set. She was 12 years old when she joined the show (playing 9-year-old Arya at the show’s outset).

“I think that when I started becoming a woman, I resented Arya because I couldn’t express who I was becoming,” Williams said in a recent British GQ interview. “And then I also resented my body, because it wasn’t aligned with the piece of me that the world celebrated.”

And while she loved Game of Thrones and the experience she gained from it, she says she doesn’t miss it.

“I don’t think it’s healthy [to miss it], because I loved it,” she said. “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.”

And don’t expect her to reprise her role as Arya Stark anytime soon, although she isn’t ruling it out.

“I’m not saying it would never happen, but I’m also not saying it in this interview so that everyone goes…’The spin-off! It’s coming.’ Because it’s not,” she said. “It has to be the right time and the right people. It has to be right in the context of all the other spin-offs and the universe of Game of Thrones. It has to be the right time for me.”