One of the most talked-about scenes on last night’s episode of Game of Thrones, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” was the one in which Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) has sex for the first time with Gendry (Joe Dempsie). If you were shocked by that moment, you’re not alone; Williams herself was so taken aback by the scene when she read it in the script for the first time, she assumed it was initially a joke being played on her by the Game of Thrones writing team.

Here’s what Williams told Entertainment Weekly about her reaction, when she assumed that the scene...

...wasn’t actually legit. Showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss have pranked their cast by sending them bogus scripts in the past (such as sending Kit Harington a scene in season 1 where Jon Snow’s face gets horribly disfigured). ‘At first, I thought it was a prank,’ the former Emmy nominee says. “I was like, ‘Yo, good one.’ And [the showrunners were] like, ‘No, we haven’t done that this year.’ Oh f—!’

Once she realized the scene was legit, Williams told EW her first reaction was “When do I shoot this? I need to go to the gym.” Because Williams is still young — 22 years old — and has been on Game of Thrones since before she was a teenager, she was allowed to decide how explicit she wanted the scene to be. “David and Dan were like: ‘You can show as much or as little as you want. So I kept myself pretty private,” Williams revealed.

The final season of Game of Thrones continues next Sunday on HBO.

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