Growing Up ‘Game of Thrones’
Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner on their unbreakable sisterhood, surreal teenage years, and the most anticipated finale ever
By Brian Hiatt
There have been all manner of supernatural manifestations, many of them quite unpleasant, on HBO’s Game of Thrones, which begins its eighth and final season in April: resurrections, premonitions, psychic time travel, a killer shadow baby, a vast army of dead dudes, a fireproof queen, a zombie dragon, regular dragons. (And over in the unnatural category, a truly weird amount of incest.) But one of the first inexplicable GoT events was far more benign — sweet, even. From the moment a 12-year-old Maisie Williams caught sight of 13-year-old Sophie Turner at their 2009 chemistry read for the roles of the Stark sisters, their connection was deep and uncanny. “We were pretty much best friends from that second on,” says Turner, now 23.
“I thought Sophie was the coolest thing I’d ever seen,” says Williams, now 21. “I get why they do chemistry reads, because when it’s right, it’s so right. Like, we’re best friends. And they could see that all those years ago, and it must have been real magic watching these two girls have the best time together.”
