Maisie Williams thought the most talked about Game of Thrones scene last night was a prank.

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Game of Thrones season 8 episode two.

When Maisie Williams first read the script containing her Game of Thrones character Arya Stark’s sex scene, she thought it was a joke.

The 22-year-old actress had received a call from co-star Sophie Turner, who told her she needed to skip through the pages to the sex scene.

GOT showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss are known for pranking cast members with bogus scripts (they once sent Kit Harington a scene where Jon Snow’s face gets terribly disfigured – thankfully that one wasn’t legit), so Williams told Entertainment Weekly she initially thought she was being tricked as well.

We unpacked everything that happened in episode 2 of Game of Thrones on our Mamamia Recaps podcast. Post continues after audio…

“At first, I thought it was a prank,” she said, “I was like, ‘Yo, good one.’ And [Benioff and Weiss were] like, ‘No, we haven’t done that this year.’ Oh f**k!”

During a table read of the scene, Williams came to accept that yep, Arya was going to get down with Gendry on the eve of the Great Battle of Wintefell.

“I”m reading the scene and thought, ‘Oh, we’re actually going to do this. When do I shoot this? I need to go to the gym.’ A whole list of things.”

Nudity is not exactly uncommon on GOT, so Williams had to deal with a pragmatic question: How much skin would she have to show?

Most cast members signed on when they were over 18 years old, and usually agreed to nudity in their deals, but Williams had been a cast member since she was 11 and had grown up in front of fans.

She said the showrunners allowed her to decide how much she showed, so she decided to keep herself “pretty private”.

“I don’t think it’s important for Arya to flash. This beat isn’t really about that,” she explained. “And everybody else has already done it on the show, so…”

Well, she’s right about that.

Of the scene, she said it was interesting to see Arya be a bit more human: “It’s a moment where she says, ‘We’re probably going to die tomorrow, I want to know what this feels like she that happens.'”

Catch up on all our Game of Thrones recaps, right here:

For more on this topic:

• Here’s how dramatically the Game of Thrones characters have changed since the first episode.
• There’s a feature-length Game of Thrones documentary coming to fuel our addiction.
• If you’re a genuine fan of Game of Thrones, you should take annual leave on the 20th of May.
• Game of Thrones Season 8: The 7 convincing fan theories you need to know.