It’s a warm day in August, and Maisie Williams looks decidedly ready for summer, her brown hair pulled back into a braid. For an actor who has experimented with everything from platinum blonde hair to candy floss pink and bright lilac, the understated look feels almost unexpected. Then again, Williams has spent much of her career refusing to stay in one place for very long.
Most people know Williams from her breakout role as Arya Stark in Game of Thrones, which launched the 29-year-old actor’s career when she was just 13. Over the span of eight seasons and 73 episodes, audiences fell in love with the brave and determined youngest daughter of the Stark clan as she traveled across Westeros, became an assassin, and eventually returned to Winterfell to avenge her family.
Williams, who originally aspired to be a dancer, has gone on to star in The New Mutants, play Catherine Dior in The New Look, and guest star on Doctor Who during Peter Capaldi‘s run. Most recently, she joined the new generation of witches in Practical Magic 2, a legacy sequel that brings back the Owens women, a multigenerational family of witches cursed so that any man who falls in love with them meets an untimely death. With a star-studded cast and a daunting legacy, Williams and the cast of the fantasy film have a lot to live up to, but (spoiler alert) they definitely do not let us down.
Maisie Williams Is a New Member of the Owens Family
Practical Magic 2 picks up 25 years after the events of the first movie. Although it seemed like Sally (Sandra Bullock) and Gilly (Nicole Kidman) had broken the Owens curse, we learn that Gary (Aidan Quinn), the hot detective from Arizona, did not manage to survive it. As a result, Sally decides to reject magic and refuses to tell her daughters, Kylie (Joey King) and Antonia (Williams), about their birthright. While Gilly and their aunts, Frances (Stockard Channing) and Jet (Dianne Wiest), still practice magic, Sally has cut herself off. It’s only when tragedy strikes that Sally is thrust back into that world in order to protect her daughters and finally break the curse.
The film is directed by Susanne Bier, the first female director to earn an Oscar, a Golden Globe, a European Film Award, and an Emmy. Bier is not only a natural choice for the sequel, but her involvement was what ultimately convinced Williams to join the project. “I didn’t know much about what Antonia would be doing in this movie, but I received a few scenes that I really loved, and I was asked to tape, and I did,” she explains, thinking back on the auditioning process. “I’m a big fan of all of the cast, but I’m a big fan of Susanne Bier, the director, and I’ve been wanting to work with her for a long time, and I’ve gotten close a few times. So when I heard that she was directing, I thought, ‘This could work.'”
The film’s blend of genres also drew Williams in. “I think, in moments it can be really serious, and in other moments it can be really fun, and I found the tapes to be like that, so I enjoyed making them.” For Williams, whose character, Antonia, is a medical student, that gave her a slightly different entry point than her co-stars. “I was excited by the journey of incorporating magic and medicine, because I felt like it was a different journey to what the movie is even about, and I liked that as an entry point, because I feel like that can be related to so many different things in life, like blending the yin and yang, and that’s kind of what the Owens sisters do, you know?”
Of course, it wasn’t just Bier that attracted the Bristol-born actress to the project. A cast that includes Bullock, Kidman, Wiest, and Channing gave her all the more reason to say yes. When asked about the feminine energy on set, Williams is quick to define it as uplifting and supportive. “It changes the energy, having so many women around and having so many women in power. It becomes more reflective of the world we live in.” The film was written by Akiva Goldsmith, Georgia Pritchett (Veep, Succession), and Kelly Marcel (Saving Mr. Banks, Fifty Shades of Grey). Behind the camera, Bullock, Kidman, and veteran producer Denise Di Novi (Practical Magic, Heathers, Edward Scissorhands) also serve as EPs.
Even today, having so many women behind the camera as well as in front of it is still far from the norm. Williams points this out, saying, “It’s so rare that I would be spending time in a room full of just men, but for some reason, on a film set, that’s entirely normal. How are we supposed to make art that reflects life if the crews that are built aren’t reflecting the streets that you walk down? So, yeah, I live for it.”
‘Practical Magic 2’ Brings Back Owens Sisterhood in a New Way
From working with so many accomplished actors on the film, Williams found herself studying her co-stars whenever she could. “Sandra and Nicole are real movie stars,” Williams praises, noting their different approaches to acting. She confesses how she often stayed on set just to watch her co-stars act and observe their process. “Nicole is someone who is listening and wants to feel it, and then she’ll react and build, and it’s very in the moment,” Williams says. “If someone says, ‘Oh, that was a great take. Do that again,’ she’s like, ‘I don’t know what I did because it’s happening in the moment.'”
“But then I watched Sandra blocking a scene where she meets Gideon (Xolo Maridueña) for the first time, and she’s stumbling over the chairs and tables. The most hilarious physical comedian ever in Hollywood. I watched her piece it together, build it up, build it up, tear it back, build it up, tear it back. It was one piece that she was tinkering away, and then she created it.”
For Williams, though, some of the most memorable moments happened when nobody was acting at all. “I used to tell myself in the trailer, ‘Okay, lock in. Focus,’ because I was just having so much fun. We’re all sitting around, like all six of the Owens women sitting around a table, and we’re all just gossiping, chatting about stuff I cannot repeat. But I’m just like, ‘This is surreal to me. This is so lovely. This feels like I’m with my friends.’ It was beautiful.”
Anyone who knows Practical Magic knows that the Owens women love their margaritas, especially at midnight, so naturally, I have to ask whether Williams got to take part in the tradition. “We had a little midnight margarita moment, but it was 6:00 a.m., so it was like 6:00 a.m. margaritas,” Williams reveals with a smile, recalling a night shoot when she, Bullock, and King shared their own early-morning version of the ritual.
Of course, the core of Practical Magic revolves around family and, more importantly, sisterhood. In the 1998 movie, that bond belonged to Sally and Gilly, but in the sequel, it extends to Kylie and Antonia. Williams was already a fan of King’s work before filming began, but their shared experience of growing up as child actors gave them an immediate point of connection. “Being able to discuss her career and my career, and starting out in this so young, and the things that are weird about that and the things that make sense, it felt really affirming to sit and chat with someone about things that most of the time a lot of people can’t really relate to.”
“We would have a lot of fun on set and just gab and gossip and chat,” Williams adds, recalling how the pair even bonded over King’s marriage to director Steven Piet. “I just kept being like, ‘I’m so mad I wasn’t there!’ And as the movie goes on, she’s like, ‘God, I’m so mad you weren’t there,’ which is so cute.” And as filming continued, the two actors only got closer. Williams remembers karaokeing with King, where they performed “WAP” and Talking Heads. Williams jokes, “That girl can drink tequila. She can drink tequila for one so tiny.”
“Then,” Williams continues, “at some point we were working together every day in a week, and I was like, ‘We should have a sleepover. Why don’t you stay at mine tonight?’ So then she came and stayed at mine, and we had some dinner and some wine, and then the next morning we had a little breakfast and went for a run. Then we went to work, and it was the best. It was really cute. Then by that point, she came and met my friends, and we went out to do karaoke, and yeah, it just kind of happened organically.”
Williams is no stranger to forming close friendships with the actors who play her sisters. Her long-standing friendship with Sophie Turner is well documented, with the pair essentially growing up together on Game of Thrones. “We’ve been really trying to find something,” Williams says when I ask whether she and Turner will work on another project. “There was a show a few years ago, which was these two girls who worked in a weed shop in California. I can’t remember what happens. They find a dead body or something. It was a comedy, and it was hilarious.”
While that project didn’t work out, Williams is looking forward to the potential of working with Turner again, especially as the two actors have their own production companies now. “We’re reading a lot of material. I think at some point something will stick and we’ll get to share the screen together again. It would be the best.”
Williams’ Experience Working With Legends Has Given Her a New Perspective on Life
Anyone who has even a little Game of Thrones in their algorithm will inevitably come across clips from the HBO fantasy series. One of the most iconic scenes involves Williams’ Arya Stark acting as cupbearer to Charles Dance‘s Tywin Lannister, who has no idea that she is Ned Stark’s (Sean Bean) daughter. Although the scene doesn’t appear in George R.R. Martin‘s A Song of Ice and Fire books, it remains one of the series’ best, thanks in large part to the way a young Williams holds her own opposite Dance. “I can’t believe I did that,” Williams marvels. “I worked with Charles Dance. It’s crazy.”
Williams also shines in a guest starring role in Doctor Who, where she plays Ashildr, a girl made immortal by Capaldi’s Doctor who eventually ends up travelling in her own TARDIS with Clara (Jenna Coleman). Now, in Practical Magic 2, she spends much of her screen time opposite Stockard Channing, with the pair frequently bouncing off one another throughout the movie. Looking back on these experiences, Williams is struck by how gracious her co-stars were as scene partners.
“Especially in film and television, people are always given the option to go home after they’ve done their coverage, and Stockard never did that, and neither did Charles, and neither did Peter, and neither did Monica Dolan or Greta Scacchi or Maxine Peake. I’ve just been with very gracious scene partners,” she explains, also referencing her co-stars from The Falling.
Working with such gracious actors who were not monsters really paved a path for me to be able to see what the industry can be at its best.
“With Charles Dance, he’s working with a child. I was very green, and for him to give me that pleasure of being able to act opposite him on my own coverage, it’s the right gentlemanly or gentlewomanly thing to do, and it doesn’t happen a lot.” Working with someone like Dance gave Williams a blueprint for the actor she wanted to be. Being given that space to grow mattered to her, but so did the example it set. “I also felt like, ‘That’s how I’m going to be when I’m grown up.’ Because they lead by example, right? You repeat what you see, especially as a child. Working with such gracious actors who were not monsters really paved a path for me to be able to see what the industry can be at its best. Because for so many people, they only really experienced the worst, and I feel sorry for them because it can be a really great place if you’re working with great people.”
That experience shaped Williams’ perspective on her life and getting older. “I think about it all the time,” Williams answers when I ask her if seeing the success and passion of these older actors has influenced her own perspective as both a woman and also an actor. “With aging, for me, every year just gets better and better and better. Maybe one year that will feel different, but I just can’t see it because I just think that life begins when you grow up. For so long, I never felt like a teenager; I never felt like I’m in my 20s. 30s I’m kind of excited for, but I’m really excited for 40s and 50s, and hell, 60s and 70s. I’m not really sure what it is about becoming a woman of that age, but I just think it’s going to make sense for me. I’ve always felt that.”
That optimism extends to the way she thinks about balancing her career with the rest of her life. “I think all the time about when to have children and when to step away, when to do this, when to do that.” And although Hollywood and society, broadly, have their own opinions on women aging, Williams’ perspective is far more positive. “I do feel like the wisdom in life that comes from just being an older woman, like the life lived and the wisdom that you earn from that, I just can’t wait. Even though that’s maybe not the way society feels, that’s how I feel. I love women that are over 40.”
‘Game of Thrones’ Is Behind Her, but Williams Looks Back on the Time Fondly
While Practical Magic has a cult status among audiences, the pressures of being in a legacy sequel are a very different beast from what Williams experienced at the height of Game of Thrones. Although Williams mentions being a “bit nervous” after underestimating the fanbase of Practical Magic, her experience working on Game of Thrones has undeniably changed the way she approaches the public reaction. “I think being under scrutiny on a show for that long just gives you the freedom to walk into anything, and it makes every new opportunity exciting. You realize that you can’t keep everyone happy, so you might as well make yourself happy.”
Looking back on her time playing Arya, seven years after the show concluded, Williams feels immense pride in both the series and the character she still calls the “coolest character ever.”
“It was such a surreal experience to live, and it was impossible to have any kind of perspective on what you’re making because everyone spoke about it in such a hyperbolic way that at a certain point you just can’t listen anymore. ‘My baby’s called Arya,’ and ‘I love Arya. She means so much to me and the show.’ All these words are so amazing to hear, but as that’s happening, you can listen, but you can’t hear it.”
Williams has mentioned publicly in the past that she’s gone back and rewatched the show, now that she’s had some time and space away from the project. In the years since Game of Thrones, she can now appreciate just how extraordinary that period of her life was. “I’m so lucky that I got to experience something like that in my career, which is just the dream for so many people.” That perspective, however, took time. “For a long time it was very difficult because it felt like the one thing that made me different from my friends and the one thing that made me different from even my other friends who are actors. It was a global success in a way that doesn’t happen that often, so it’s hard to find people to talk to about it.”
The industry is built on rejection, and you have to just wait your turn.
That distance doesn’t necessarily make watching the later seasons any easier. “The early seasons I love, but the later stuff is too embarrassing because it feels too close to who I am now.” In the early seasons of the show, specifically Seasons 1 and 2, Williams says watching the episodes can feel like rediscovering memories she had forgotten. “Some of the stuff I don’t even remember doing, and I don’t remember where we filmed it or anything like that.” But beyond that, well, even Williams can admit that watching herself “starts to get quite awkward.”
As is the case with most actors so closely associated with a defining role, growing past playing Arya came with its own challenges. As a child, Williams had the support of her parents and teachers, and landing Game of Thrones so young meant she largely skipped one of acting’s harshest realities: rejection. “I think a huge part of my growth as a person was feeling that rejection after the show and thickening up my skin and working harder.” Auditioning after Game of Thrones, she says, ultimately became an important lesson. “That’s the reality of being an actor. The industry is built on rejection, and you have to just wait your turn. You have to do your best work, and then some things work out, and some things don’t. So, I think that was just a really good lesson.”
Notably, among her recent projects, Williams crossed paths with Dexter Sol Ansell, the current star of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, in 500 Miles, where the two actors also worked with Bill Nighy. Ansell, who had just been cast as Egg, was about to enter a world Williams knew better than most: joining the Game of Thrones universe as a child actor. But when I ask if she imparted any words of wisdom before Ansell went off to Westeros, Williams shakes her head. “No, I didn’t, because there’s nothing I can say right now that will make sense to him.”
She did, however, offer some advice to Ansell’s mother. “I think I said to his mom it’s going to be hard — of course, it’s going to be hard — but he’s going to be fine because he’s Dexter. He really does have his head screwed on in a nice way. So, just enjoy it. I think I just told him to enjoy it because every ounce of excitement that he’s feeling is exactly what it is. It’s the best thing to be doing as a kid. It’s so much fun.” Speaking from her own experience, she adds, “At the time, when you’re in it, you’re like, ‘My life is amazing.’ It’s not until a little bit older that you’re like, ‘Oh, some things didn’t quite line up the way that they did for other people, and now I’m starting to feel that.’ But that is not the experience, at least for me, as it was happening as a child. I was like, ‘I never want to go back to school. This is great.'”
How Williams Embraced Herself After Arya Stark
In the years since Game of Thrones, Williams has been open about her own struggle with her identity. In several interviews since the conclusion of the series, Williams has talked about the difficulty she faced as she grew up and became a woman. After the series, she experimented with new fashion looks, dyeing her hair, and expanding beyond the impression she gave as the tomboyish Arya Stark. “I feel like I had to just live my teenage years in my 20s because I didn’t get to do them when I was a teenager,” Williams says with a smile. “I feel like it was so much fun to shave my head, to bleach my hair, to bleach my eyebrows. It’s just fun to see all these different ways I can look and the different things that it brings out in my personality.”
Today, with her familiar brown hair and dark brows, Williams points out that she looks similar to when she finished Game of Thrones, acknowledging that, “Sometimes you have to just experiment for seven years before realizing what you love.” And as time has gone on, those early insecurities have slowly melted away. “A rule that I live by now is that I think I’ve taken so many people’s opinions on so deeply, as if capturing all of that and doing that service for people is, in any way, useful for myself, which it’s not. So now, I’m a big believer that people are always going to talk about you; they’re always going to judge different things, and so you may as well not add to the fire. At least love yourself and love what you do.”
This change in mentality has done wonders for Williams. She’s confident and easygoing as she looks back and ahead, giving thoughtful insights and offering a perspective that feels wise beyond her years. It’s undoubtedly taken a lot of soul-searching, but Williams’ outlook comes after being thrust into superstardom at such a young age. “If you focus more on the parts of yourself that you’re grateful for, you start to light up a little bit,” Williams says, remembering times when she would internalize judgment and negativity in a way that was unhealthy. “Your mind is very powerful, and it can also shape not just your own view and your own look, but also the way that other people see you and perceive you.”
I feel like I had to just live my teenage years in my 20s because I didn’t get to do them when I was a teenager.
For Williams, moving beyond such a defining period of her life has also changed the way she thinks about friendship. “I feel like I have so many more friends now, but they were always my friends; I just didn’t feel like I could reach out to them.” She points out that this is something she sees often with others who find fame and ultimately disclose that they feel like they have lost touch with the people who were once close to them.
“I felt like I couldn’t burden my friends with my issues or whatever, and that was ridiculous,” she says, recalling her past insecurities. “I went through that alone, and all those people have always been there, and they still are there because they are the greatest friends on earth, and it’s just been so freeing being able to just spend more time in the physical world rather than this world of digital media and interviews and headlines and retweets and reposts. It’s too much for the human brain to be able to contend with sometimes.”
Williams’ Future Is Bright, and Nothing Is Off the Table
With Practical Magic 2 now completed, Williams is looking ahead to what might come next. For some, being so closely associated with high fantasy might make an actor reluctant to return to the genre, but for Williams, it’s not something she’ll ever rule out. “I think Arya’s fantasy elements were pretty contained with the Faceless stuff, but it’s like, I didn’t get to ride a dragon.” As a lover of the genre, she points out that there’s still so much left for her to explore. “I would love to play a fair maiden, too. I would love to be in the high tower. I would be into doing that. Not most people’s obvious choice because of the roles that I play, but yeah, I would love to be on the throne — not the Game of Thrones throne — but in something.”
For fans of the Game of Thrones franchise, that comment might pique your interest. After all, there’s always been rumors floating around of a potential Arya Stark spin-off that might take place after the events of the show. Even as recently as January of this year, George R.R. Martin was talking about the potential of a spin-off series either starring Kit Harington as Jon Snow or turning the focus to Arya. But there’s been no word on such a project since then. For Williams’ part, when I ask her point-blank if she’d consider playing the character again, she answers very diplomatically. “Maybe,” she says after considering for a second. “I don’t know. It changes every day. Tomorrow I might say no, and the day after I might say yes. But today I say maybe.”
Moving beyond just being in front of the camera, Williams also mentions that she’s been doing some writing, but she has run into one problem. “I can’t stop writing blockbusters, and no one’s making first-time-writer blockbusters,” she says with a laugh. “I don’t know what the right project will be — probably won’t be the first script I write, obviously, because that’s crazy.”
And, as much as she might enjoy a good genre project, Williams wants to dive deeper into character and maybe even step into the realm of indie films. Bringing up a recent script she read, she says, “It’s kind of one of these films where nothing actually happens, but it’s a deep exploration of character and interpersonal relationships, and love and grief and family dynamics. There is something that happens, but the world doesn’t end.” She likes the quiet nuance of that type of film, something that might not be a major hit at the box office, and one where you don’t end the movie “covered in blood and mud.”
When I point out that I lovingly call these types of movies “film festival movies,” she nods along. “The realm of festival cinema and independent cinema is the sort of films I love to watch, so I would love to make more things like that. The right ones have a lot of actresses that want to do them, so at some point it will work out.”
At 29, Maisie Williams speaks about her career with the perspective of someone who has already lived through several distinct chapters. Despite her fame, there’s no pretentiousness or aloofness, and she’s surprisingly easy to talk to. If there’s magic in the world, it likely has some part in making Williams into the well-adjusted and mature woman she is today. Whether she’s mixing up margaritas and chanting spells with the Owens family or wielding a dagger and donning a magical mask to avenge the Stark family, Maisie Williams has proven that it’s possible not only to survive the perils of being a child actor, but also to transform and turn that talent and passion into a fruitful career without losing yourself in the process.
Photographer: Hamish Robertson | Hair: Clayton Hawkins | Makeup: Kindra Mann | Styling: Dino Bonacic
Practical Magic 2
- Release Date
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September 11, 2026
- Runtime
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130 Minutes
- Writers
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Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett
