She had a tough childhood.
Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams has spoken publicly for the first time about her “traumatic” relationship with her father, leaving her feeling as if “something was wrong” with her.
Before becoming one of the biggest stars of the HBO series at age 12, Maisie grew up in Somerset with her mum and three siblings.
Speaking on The Diary of a CEO podcast, the 25 year old told host Steven Bartlett: “I, as a young child before the age of, like, eight, had quite a traumatic relationship with my dad. And I don’t really want to go into it too much because it affects my siblings and my whole family.
“But that really consumed a lot of my childhood. Ever since I can remember I’ve really struggled sleeping.
“I think a lot of the traumatic things that were happening, I didn’t realise that 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?'”
Clearly getting emotional about the chat, the host said: “We can stop as much as you want by the way. We don’t have to carry on,” before he then got up from his chair to give the actor a hug.
Maisie then went on to detail her experience of finding help while at school, saying: “When I was about eight…it had met its peak and I was at school and I was obviously really struggling.
“I was taken by a teacher to the staff room and she was saying ‘What’s wrong, what’s happened, are you hungry?’.
“She said ‘did you eat breakfast’ and I said ‘we just don’t have breakfast’ and then she said ‘do you normally have breakfast’ and I said ‘not really.’
“And so you know 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 and it was really really hard.”
She then went on to speak more about her father and her relationship with him, saying she felt as though she was “indoctrinated in a way”.
“I think that’s why I’m obsessed with cults.
“My whole world flipped on its head,” she said.
“It’s not because of me that these bad things happened when I was a child.
“I felt that there was something inherently wrong with me or us because we did lots of things wrong all the time which is like why you would be mistreated.
“Taking that step back and seeing it more objectively kind of like makes me more interested in the guy.
“I’m like what happened to you as a kid? Did you pull the legs off bugs or did you learn this?
“That’s how I feel about him now, he would make a fascinating documentary and it’s nice to not feel the personal pain of that anymore.”
