Joe Dempsie on his scene with Arya: ‘I don’t want to be patronizing toward Maisie’

SPOILERS for Sunday night’s episode of Game of Thrones, “A Knight of Seven Kingdoms.”

By now, hopefully every Game of Thrones fan has seen the episode and all of the tender, intimate moments between beloved characters on the eve of battle. There was an early scene where sweaty Gendry was working on his tools and Arya came in and she was eyef–king the hell out of him and I was like “oh, this is interesting.” And then it happened – later in the episode, Arya basically tells Gendry that she wants to lose her V to him and he’s like… uh, okay? And they get down to it. After years of survival and being a Faceless Man, Arya got some with Hot Gendry. I wasn’t bothered by the “she’s just a kid!” complaints at all – within the story, she’s probably supposed to be like 18 years old or so, and Gendry would presumably be not much older. In real life, Maisie Williams is 22. It’s fine. Entertainment Weekly did some interviews with Joe Dempsie and Maisie about the scene:

Sophie Turner read the scene first & called Maisie: “I called Maisie and was like: ‘Have you read it yet?’” Turner recalls. “And she’s like, ‘I’m midway through episode one.’ And I’m like: This scene, this page, read it! This is awesome! She was very happy.” Confirms Williams: “Sophie said, ‘Whatever you do, you have to skip to this episode, this scene first.’ So I just read that and it was practically all I knew about the entire season.”

Maisie worried about getting to the gym: “I got to the read-through and I’m reading the scene and thought, ‘Oh, we’re actually going to do this. When do I shoot this? I need to go to the gym.’ A whole list of things.”

Maisie got to decide how much she would show: Williams says the showrunners let her decide precisely how much to show. “David and Dan were like: ‘You can show as much or as little as you want,’” Williams says. “So I kept myself pretty private. I don’t think it’s important for Arya to flash. This beat isn’t really about that. And everybody else has already done it on the show, so… “

They rushed the scene: “Then [the scene] was rushed. We were [directed by] David Nutter, who has a habit of speaking fast anyway. By the end we’re rushing to finish the scene and David is going, ‘Okay, you’re going to come in and do this and do that and, great, take your top off’ — and then walked off. And I’m like … ’Okay. Let’s do it.’”

Joe Dempsie felt weird about it: He suggested the experience was strange for him too for given how long he’s known Williams, who’s about a decade younger than he is. “It’s obviously slightly strange for me because I’ve known Maisie since she was 11, 12 years old,” says the 31-year-old actor. “At the same time, I don’t want to be patronizing toward Maisie — she’s a 20-year-old woman. So we just had a lot of fun with it.”

What it means to the character: “It was really interesting because it’s a very human relationship for Arya,” Williams says. “This is something she’s stayed away from, an emotion we’ve never really seen her engage with. David and Dan were like, ‘It’s the end of the world, what else would you have her do?’ This may be is a moment where Arya accepts death tomorrow, which she never does — ‘Not Today.’ So it was that moment where she says, ‘We’re probably going to die tomorrow, I want to know what this feels like before that happens.’ It’s interesting to see Arya be a bit more human, speak more normally about things people are scared of.”

[From EW]

I think that’s an interesting last point. Take Arya’s character development alongside Bran’s development. Bran is barely human anymore, and will likely become less so in the final episodes. Arya’s brief reclaiming of her own humanity, her own wants and needs, was a step in the other direction, after several years spent training as a Faceless Man. She went from A Girl to Arya-with-a-crush-on-Gendry. But what was the meaning of her postcoital far-away look? I took it as disappointment – like, “that’s all it is?” Maybe Gendry is no Poddrick. Poddrick is an angel-voiced stallion.

Also: Sophie Turner (Sansa) was a big fan of Arya losing her V. This is NSFW and hilarious.