Maisie Williams found huge professional success at just 12 years old when she was cast as Arya Stark in Game of Thrones, but she recently revealed that until then her childhood had been a string of traumatic events that impacted her mental health in ways she’s still grappling with.
While appearing on a recent episode of The Diary of a CEO hosted by Steven Bartlett, she opened up about about her family and her relationship with her estranged father for the first time. Williams explained that her mother “escaped” her father when she was just four months old, but she didn’t cut off contact with him until she was eight after a number of negative experiences. She began, “Well, I, as a young child before the age of, like, eight, had a traumatic relationship with my dad. And I don’t want to go into it too much because it affects my siblings and my whole family.” However, she did note that the “pain” and “fear” she experienced at that young age made her feel as though she was being “indoctrinated” into a “child cult” as it took her a long time to realize just how wrong that behavior was.
“That really consumed a lot of my childhood. Ever since I can remember, I’ve really struggled sleeping,” the actor continued. “I think a lot of the traumatic things that were happening, I didn’t realize they were wrong. But I knew…I would look around at other kids and be like, ‘Why don’t they seem to understand this pain, or dread, or fear? Where does the joy – when does that come for me?’” Tearing up, she added, “I had that feeling of impending doom and I didn’t know how to make that go away. There is a period of your childhood when things can stunt or alter forever who you are going to become.”
But Williams said all of that began to change after she opened up to a teacher at her school about what was going on in her home life. She said, “When I was about eight, there was quite a complex string of events that happened, but basically it had met its peak and I was at school and I was really struggling. I was taken by a teacher to the staff room. She asked me what had happened, she said, ‘Are you hungry?’ and I said ‘Yeah.’ She asked me if I ate breakfast, I said ‘No,’ she said, ‘Why not?’ I said we just didn’t have any breakfast, and then she asked if I normally had breakfast. They were asking the right questions. My mum came to school and picked me up. It was the first time that all of the doors were open and all of these things that we were experiencing were out on the table.”
But even so, the actor explained that she felt a strange loyalty towards her father and couldn’t understand why she was being separated from him. “I still wanted to fight and say these things aren’t wrong, you’re just trying to take me away from my dad and that’s wrong,” she said. “I was indoctrinated in a way. I think that’s why I’m obsessed with cults. Because I’m, like, I get it, I get it. I was in a child cult. I was really fighting it at the beginning, my whole world flipped on its head.” And even once she understood the separation was in her best interest, she added, “I was so glad I didn’t have to see my dad anymore, but it was against everything I’d ever known. You can feel so liberated and free and at the same time, just like that impending doom is kind of still there. All your problems don’t just go away, you still care a lot about that person, or the pain that led to those very, very poor decisions.”