‘Game Of Thrones’ Star Gets Emotional Talking About ‘Traumatic Relationship’ With Her Dad During Her Childhood

“Game Of Thrones” star Maisie Williams broke down as she talked about what she called a “traumatic relationship” with her dad. Things got so bad that she wondered when would this “joy” thing she’d heard about happen for her.

During the 25-year-old actress’ appearance on the “The Diary of A CEO” podcast Sunday, she told the host, Stephen Barlett, that as a young child before the age of 8 she knew all to well about concepts like “pain” and “fear.”

“I had quite a traumatic relationship with my dad …’” Willams shared. “That really consumed a lot of my childhood. Ever since I can remember I’ve struggled sleeping.”

“And I think a lot of the traumatic things that were happening, I didn’t realize they were wrong,” she added. “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?’”

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“I’ve kind of always felt like I felt things very deeply in comparison to other people and so when that period of my life ended, I imagined that everything is just up from here, everything’s perfect now,” the superstar continued. “All those things I was concerned about were actually wrong and now, I’m sort of free. And then at different stages in life, you realize there’s never an end destination for that freedom, and that it kind of comes from within.”

At one point, Maisie — known for her role as Arya Stark on the hit HBO fantasy — talked about how her mom “escaped” her dad when she was just four months old and explained how things were “bad” before that. She didn’t go into any further detail during the interview about what that meant as she fought back tears and had to stop several times when she got emotional.

In the Spring/Summer 2022 British GQ Style issue, the “Two Weeks to Live” star talked about landing such a life-changing role at the age of 12 on “GoT” and how she was “grateful” that they were protected until she was older.

“I’m grateful we were protected from it until that point, too,” Maisie shared about being put in the limelight in her mid-teens. “If that had happened when I was 12, I’m not sure what that would have done to me mentally.”