‘Game Of Thrones’ Star Joe Dempsie Reacts To Arya And Gendry’s Sex Scene

“Game of Thrones” had a little bit of romance in Season 8, episode 2, and it was a relationship that some fans had been waiting years to see. Arya decided since it might be their last night alive that she wanted to have sex with Gendry. Actor Joe Dempsie admitted that it was a “slightly strange” scene for him.

While some viewers see it as one of the most consensual, empowered love scenes in the HBO series, others felt a little awkward. Fans have been watching Arya actress Maisie Williams, who was 12 when she was cast in “Game of Thrones,” grow up onscreen. Dempsie, 31, knows that feeling well, but he also pointed out that both Arya and Williams are adults now.

“It’s obviously slightly strange for me because I’ve known Maisie since she was 11, 12 years old,” Dempsie told Entertainment Weekly. “At the same time, I don’t want to be patronizing toward Maisie — she’s a 20-year-old woman. So we just had a lot of fun with it.”

The Arya-Gendry relationship has always been tricky territory for the actor. The show started teasing Arya’s crush in the early seasons when Williams was a teenager. Dempsie previously pointed out that the characters don’t have the same age difference in George R.R. Martin’s novels.

“Yeah, I think it’s implied in the books that there might be a romantic element to the relationship, and in the books I think the characters are significantly closer in age. I know from my personal experience, when we were filming the earlier seasons and people would ask about that and talk about that, I would feel slightly uncomfortable,” the actor told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017. “I’m acting alongside a child here. I was a 25-year-old man. I sometimes found that question a little hard to address and a little tricky to answer.”

However, Arya isn’t a child anymore. She’s believed to be about 18 years old in “Game of Thrones” Season 8, and her experiences have made her far wiser than the average 18-year-old. Meanwhile, Williams is 22 in real life, and she got to call the shots in terms of what the HBO program could actually show.

“[Showrunners] David Benioff and Dan [Weiss] were like: ‘You can show as much or as little as you want,’” Williams told EW. “So I kept myself pretty private. I don’t think it’s important for Arya to flash. This beat isn’t really about that.”

The scene is about what could be Arya and Gendry’s last night among the living. The Army of the Dead is coming, and next week’s battle is expected to be a bloodbath.

“Game of Thrones” Season 8 airs Sundays on HBO.