'Game of Thrones' star Maisie Williams says she 'resented' Arya when she 'started becoming a woman'

• "Game of Thrones" star Maisie Williams told GQ Style about the difficulty of growing up on the show.
• She said she "resented" her character Arya Stark because she couldn't express herself as a woman.

Maisie Williams, who played Arya Stark on "Game of Thrones," recently said that she "resented" her role on the HBO hit series because it stopped her from expressing herself as a woman.

Williams starred in the drama for all eight seasons, auditioning for the role at the age of 12. However, she told GQ style that she began to dislike Arya's tomboyish appearance as the series went on.

"I think that when I started becoming a woman, I resented Arya because I couldn't express who I was becoming," Williams said. "And then I also resented my body because it wasn't aligned with the piece of me that the world celebrated."

GQ Style reporter Douglas Greenwood also described a "coming-of-age moment" when Williams was first handed a bra in the "Game of Thrones" costume trailer. He said it "marked the beginning of a distancing from, if not the fun of playing Arya Stark, then at least the way Williams identified with her."

This isn't the first time Williams has spoken about the difficulty portraying her popular "GoT" character while she was going through puberty.

In 2019, Williams said on CBS's "60 Minutes" that for a few seasons of the show, she had to wear "a strap just to reverse puberty for the first few years while Arya was pretending to be a boy." She recalled that she also had to wear a chubby belly to even out her body at the age of 15.

She added: "I remember, I guess, like season six is when Arya gets her new costume, I think. And I remember I walked into my trailer one morning, and there was a little bra, and it was very exciting. I was like, 'I don't have to wear the strap anymore.'"

The 24-year-old actress also previously told Vogue that the strap made her feel "ashamed for a while."

"Around season two or three, my body started to mature and I started to become a woman but Arya was still very much like trying to be disguised as a boy," Williams told the magazine in 2019. "I had really short hair and they'd constantly cover me in dirt and shade my nose so it looked really broad and I looked really manly.

She added: "They'd also put this strap across my chest to flatten any growth that had started and, I don't know, that just felt horrible for six months of the year, and I felt kind of ashamed for a while."

Williams continued that it was "nice to look more feminine" and "embrace the body I have" after the series ended.

HBO's "Game of Thrones" ended in May 2019.