It’s not unusual for actors who do their own stunts to deal with minor injuries sustained on set while completing things like big fight scenes, but it turns out that way smaller acts could lead to bumps and bruises, as well. Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams revealed that she totally hurt herself with her own sword while trying to stab The Hound (actor Rory McCann), and said “it was so embarrassing.”
How Did Maisie Williams Embarrass Herself While Filming Game Of Thrones?
Game of Thrones cast member Maisie Williams was a wee lass of only 12 when she landed her breakthrough role of young badass Arya Stark on the hit fantasy series (which you can watch with your Max subscription). She’s now spent some time reflecting on both the end of the beloved drama (which she shared brutally honest thoughts about), her time on it and her life immediately after its divisive 2019 finale.
Williams has now opened up to Armchair Expert host Dax Shepard about a time she embarrassed herself during a fight scene by hurting herself with her own sword. Apparently, the actress is right-handed, but Arya was not. When asked if she’d “ever done anything stupid” from not being good with her left hand, she replied:
Kind of, it was sort of a combination of people's fault. I don't want to say it was fully my fault, but there's a moment where I'm jabbing The Hound in his chest plate with my sword, and obviously it's like not going through because he's got armor on, and they wanted to get a nice close-up shot of the sword warping, but we need to use the real sword that doesn't warp as easily because it's the close shot.
That led to a lot of futzing around with the sword and trying to get the look of the action just right for the many people checking the scene out. She continued:
I jabbed it in and then a combination of people — it was a lot of cooks, you know? Like, I'm warping it, I'm trying to tell someone how I want to warp it, while another person is saying 'Do you think that you could stab him?' and they move the tip of the sword. And where I'm trying to warp it I flick the sword and crack myself on the eyebrow. For the rest of the day they have to shoot me from the other side because I've got this huge egg. It was so embarrassing. Like you know when you can hear everyone go [sucks her breath in], and I was just like 'Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry.'
Ooooh…OUCH! While certainly not a major injury in the grand scheme of things, I can definitely see it hurting a lot if you “crack” yourself on the eyebrow with a sword. I can also see how the talented star (who you can now check out with your Apple TV+ subscription on The New Look) ended up being “so” embarrassed by it, since this accident didn’t even happen in the heat of filming a fight sequence, when things can sometimes spin a bit out of control.
This just goes to show how all-encompassing her time on GOT was, particularly considering how young she was. The Pistol star said recently that she feels “a lot more comfortable in my own skin” after being “so lost for so long” because of the show and not being able to “pin down what I felt my identity was within that.” It’s quite lucky that she’s now been able to more thoroughly process her time on Game of Thrones, as well as her identity after the show. And, let’s also hope that there are no more awkward sword incidents for Williams in the future.
