9. Right-Handed Maisie Williams Learnt To Swordfight With Her Left For Arya's Sake
Swordfighting is big business in Westeros. Despite all the clever wordplay, political backbiting and ingenious machinations, there occasionally comes a time when a character has to pick up a sword and rend head from body. So when it comes time to duel, they turn to Assistant Stunt Coordinator Buster Reeves, who also directed the fighting on Clash Of The Titans and The Dark Knight Rises. Reeves' problem is that the actors often don't have time to master sword-fighting, so he has to teach them 'like learning a dance.' Not that this is doing the fight scenes an injustice in setting up duels, he has to take into account the different characters and come up with a routine which fits their personality. While this is occasionally obvious for instance, Syrio Forel fights far differently from The Mountain you also see more subtle versions. For instance Jaime Lannister fights smoothly and cockily as befitting his natural talent, whereas Ned Stark fought him with a slower, more dogged style showcasing his experience. However, the MVP in swordfighting is clearly Maisie Williams Arya Stark is Williams' first gig as an actress, so she's very new to everything, including swordfights. Yet a few scenes demand her to mock-duel Syrio Forel, played by theatre-fight-experienced Miltos Yeromelou. It would be hard enough as a greenhorn to not look stupid in Yeromelou's company if you were firing on all cylinders, but Williams chose to eschew her natural right hand to train with her left, entirely because that's Arya Stark's dominant hand. Nobody told her to do this, and she surely receives all the praise she can get for it it's about the closest kids get to method acting (unsurprisingly, young adults aren't allowed to go full Christian Bale or Daniel Day-Lewis) and she knocked it out the park.