The Diary of a CEOMaisie Williams: The Painful Past Of A Game Of Thrones Star | E181
CHAPTERS
- 0:00 – 2:20
Opening, Ground Rules, and Returning to Somerset
Steven sets up the episode, asks for subscriptions, and then invites Maisie to take him back to her childhood in Somerset. She immediately signals there are areas she will protect because they affect her family, framing the conversation as careful but honest.
- •Host intro and brief show framing by Steven Bartlett
- •Maisie agrees they can pause any time; emotional safety is prioritized
- •First question: what from Somerset and early life matters for understanding her now
- •She flags that detailing her father’s behavior would impact her siblings and mother, so she’ll speak around specifics
- 2:20 – 8:40
Childhood Trauma, Fear, and the Absence of Joy
Maisie describes a traumatic relationship with her father, lifelong sleep problems, and a pervasive sense of dread from as early as she can remember. As a child she saw other kids playing freely and could not understand why she felt only fear and impending doom.
- •Mother left father when Maisie was a baby, escaping with the children
- •Maisie struggled to sleep and lived with unnamed dread, assuming it was normal
- •She didn’t initially recognize events as ‘wrong’; instead she thought other kids just didn’t feel pain the way she did
- •She expected life to become perfect once that chapter ended, then later learned there is no neat ‘end destination’ of freedom
- •Early identity formed around being the girl in pain, later contrasted with Arya Stark, a character who wouldn’t let bad things happen
- 8:40 – 19:10
Anxiety, Identity, and the Search for the ‘Real’ Self
The conversation turns to anxiety, authenticity, and whether a damaged inner child can ever be recovered. Maisie connects much of her anxiety to not being herself in public and building a performative persona for interviews and social situations.
- •She felt anxious because she was performing a version of herself she didn’t recognize
- •Describes the confusion of not knowing who she is in social settings, leading to hyper self-consciousness
- •Explores the modern idea of “returning to your child self” and whether that self can be too damaged to find
- •Steven references Lewis Howes’ work on inner child healing and self-forgiveness
- •Maisie wonders if some aspects of identity now must be built, not recovered
- 19:10 – 34:00
The Teacher Who Asked the Right Questions
At eight, during the peak of what she was enduring at home, a teacher pulled Maisie aside and started asking very specific questions about basic care. That conversation opened the door to authorities and her mother, changing the family’s trajectory.
- •Maisie is taken to the staff room by a concerned teacher
- •Instead of vague questions, the teacher asks concretely about breakfast and food at home
- •Her simple answers (‘we didn’t have any breakfast’) trigger concern and further inquiry
- •This leads to her mother being called in and the family’s situation being laid bare for the first time
- •Maisie likens her loyalty to her father to being in a ‘child cult’ against her mother, highlighting indoctrination and conflicting loyalties
- •She remembers wanting to defend her father even while feeling relief at not seeing him again
- 34:00 – 41:00
Reframing Her Father and Letting Go of Personal Blame
As an adult, Maisie has worked on decoupling her father’s abuse from her own worth. She now views him with a kind of clinical curiosity, wondering about his own childhood and what could lead someone to consistently mistreat their children.
- •For years she believed bad things happened because something was wrong with her
- •She experiments with the idea that his behavior had nothing to do with her, and would have been directed at any child there
- •This creates space to view him less as a personal villain and more as a deeply damaged person
- •She wonders about his parents, his own childhood, whether he ‘pulled the legs off bugs’, and what shaped him
- •This objectification lessens personal pain and shame, though it doesn’t excuse the harm
- 41:00 – 47:40
Control, Self-Blame, and the Seeds of Performance
Maisie describes trying to control the uncontrollable so she won’t have new reasons to blame herself. She also reveals that by the time she was doing Game of Thrones interviews at 12, she already knew how to access deep pain, which baffled interviewers.
- •She became hyper-controlling to prevent outcomes she could later beat herself up for
- •Grew up believing everything going wrong was her fault, reinforcing perfectionism
- •As a child actor, journalists asked how she could portray such rage and grief; she felt the question was naïve because she knew those feelings intimately
- •Acting gave her a legitimate outlet to express repressed emotions without real-world consequences
- •She kept early trauma private for years because she herself didn’t fully understand it, and felt she had no ‘resolution’ to offer others
- 47:40 – 53:10
Acting, Embodiment, and the Joy of Performance
Maisie explains why performing felt uniquely liberating: in dance and acting her body and voice could move freely, and she could both feel joy internally and provoke emotional reactions in others. This sense of purpose motivated her to pursue the arts relentlessly.
- •As a child, performing was the only time she felt human and joyful
- •She was willing to leave home and family to attend stage school, seeing performing as ‘everything’
- •She relates her experience to ideas from The Body Keeps the Score about movement and acting as antidepressant therapies
- •With acting she found a double benefit: bodily release and the joy of entertaining others, momentarily escaping the narrative of being a disappointment
- •The Game of Thrones audition was filled with carefree kids; she expected to fall short but discovered her difference was exactly what the role needed
- 53:10 – 1:00:50
Fame, Money, and the Illusion That Problems Disappear
Global fame at 12 and financial security changed Maisie’s material conditions but not her internal world. She grapples with guilt over privilege, the gap between her life and her friends’ realities, and the realization that money cannot erase trauma or guarantee happiness.
- •She grew up in a council house watching her mum work extremely hard to provide
- •By 18–20, she realized she would never struggle for rent or a job the way her peers might
- •This created guilt and a sense of alienation; she cannot fully relate to the struggle of choosing between a ‘sensible’ job and creative dreams
- •She emphasizes money removes certain fears (bills, housing) but not deeper emotional pain
- •Notes how she twice believed a life change (leaving her dad; becoming rich) would fix everything, and both times discovered unresolved internal issues remained
- 1:00:50 – 1:06:10
Post-Thrones Identity and Dropping the Persona
As Game of Thrones peaked and ended, Maisie felt she was cosplaying a media-trained, palatable version of herself. Ending the show, and then the pandemic’s forced stillness, gave her a chance to shed that persona and ask who she could become instead.
- •During later Thrones years she felt like she was ‘going through the motions’ in life and press
- •She’d tried hard to be a good role model and say the right thing, but it felt inauthentic and driven by wanting to be liked
- •When the show ended she didn’t feel lost; she felt excited—“Who could I be?”—because she’d already emotionally checked out from the persona
- •The pandemic reduced external variables, making mood patterns and triggers easier to observe and understand
- •She wishes her younger self had treated interviews more playfully instead of torturing herself over ‘the real’ answer to every question
- 1:06:10 – 1:12:10
Self-Hatred, Embarrassment, and the Work of Therapy
Maisie recounts a period around 20 where she obsessed daily over being “awful, disgusting, unattractive, unkind, unlikable,” and how those beliefs began long before fame. Therapy and transcendental meditation are helping her trace the origins and soften their grip.
- •At 20 she had an intensely negative self-image and spoke to herself with cruelty
- •She recognizes that this self-image can become self-fulfilling; the mind’s story shapes behavior
- •She’s working with a therapist to locate the earliest roots of shame and feeling like the unwanted child at other kids’ houses
- •Transcendental meditation has surfaced ‘little tickets’—memories and insights—from her subconscious, even if she hasn’t fully decoded them yet
- •She suspects she absorbed a family pattern of feeling like existing is “taking up too much room”
- 1:12:10 – 1:18:10
Can You Ever Fully Heal? Triggers, Evidence, and the Eraser Test
They discuss whether it’s possible to ever fully erase trauma; both conclude it remains but can be outvoted by new evidence. Maisie reframes each trigger as another move in a board game, another opportunity to react differently rather than proof of failure.
- •Steven notes he’s never met someone who has fully erased traumatic stories; they build counter-evidence instead
- •Maisie rejects viewing triggered reactions as ‘going back to square one’—you’re still further along the journey
- •She emphasizes a dual awareness: the part of the brain reacting and the observing ‘spirit’ that can choose the next move
- •Healing is continuous: there is no final moment when triggers vanish, only ongoing chances to respond with more awareness
- •She would not use an ‘eraser’ on her trauma; despite its horror, it gifted her depth of feeling and artistic range
- 1:18:10 – 1:26:00
Mushrooms? No. Meditation, Spirituality, and Substance Use
Maisie clarifies that her big shifts came via transcendental meditation and everyday spiritual experiences, not psychedelics. She also contextualizes her teenage substance use as heavy partying rather than entrenched addiction, and describes her now-moderate relationship with alcohol.
- •She jokes about mushrooms and ayahuasca but says real change came from meditation and day-to-day spiritual moments of not feeling alone
- •Describes feeling a benevolent ‘something’ that will take care of her on hard days
- •Acknowledges using ‘party drugs’ as a teenager and recognizing she needed to stop to feel genuine happiness
- •Clarifies she doesn’t consider herself sober but now drinks mostly socially and moderately
- •Recognizes the slippery slope of using substances to numb trauma and consciously avoids that pattern
- 1:26:00 – 1:33:00
Love, Self-Sabotage, and Building New Evidence with Reuben
Talking about her partner Reuben, Maisie admits she used to flee at any sign of conflict, misreading normal tension as danger. Reuben’s patience and gentle mirroring helped her see this as self-sabotage, allowing her to experience a peaceful, safe relationship for the first time.
- •Previously she rejected relationships quickly, labeling them cringe or unrealistic and running at the first disagreement
- •Her trauma response equated any conflict with impending harm, so she’d cut off emotions and leave
- •With Reuben, he calmly pointed out her patterns without trying to control her, offering time and space instead
- •This allowed her to recognize the pattern and stay, building new internal evidence that intimacy can be safe
- •She now experiences joy and peace in cohabitation she never saw modeled growing up
- 1:33:00 – 1:44:40
Owning Her Core Self: Kindness, Shame, and Expectations
When asked who she is, Maisie struggles emotionally to say she is kind and sensitive. She recognizes that these are not ‘bad’ traits, yet years of being treated as if she were a monster made her ashamed of her true nature and chasing external expectations instead.
- •Identifies her core as kind, sensitive, and considerate of others’ feelings
- •Crying, she wonders why she spent so long being made to feel like a monster if this is who she truly is
- •She and Steven discuss how being told your core self is ‘not good enough’ can lead to a lifetime of chasing impossible expectations
- •She speculates she may undervalue kindness in others because she internalized messages that it was unworthy
- •Realizing she might be wrong about foundational beliefs opens the door to radical freedom: “What else am I wrong about?”
- 1:44:40 – 1:57:20
Redefining Success, Mission, and the Value of Creative Lives
Maisie rejects a static, trophy definition of success, instead framing it as a series of conscious choices in difficult moments. Looking ahead, her mission is to use her privilege and platform to help more people make a living doing what they love creatively.
- •She doesn’t see success as a finish line but as tiny decisions at each crossroads—choosing perspective, non-selfishness, and better self-talk
- •Her 10-year vision of a ‘good decade’ involves being proud of how she handled triggers, not avoiding them
- •Art and creative work changed her life; she wants to build companies and systems that let more creatives sustainably do what they love
- •She wonders if a world where more people routinely create might be a less painful, more functional world
- •Argues everyone is an ‘artist’ in some sense; humans are fundamentally makers, even if their medium isn’t traditionally labeled art
- 1:57:20 – 2:04:40
Time, ADHD, and Letting Life Re-Arrange Itself
In the closing Q&A, Maisie answers a previous guest’s question about a decision gone sideways with an ADHD-related medication mishap. She uses it to illustrate her evolving relationship with time, self-forgiveness, and not over-controlling her schedule.
- •She was diagnosed with ADHD about 18 months prior and takes daily medication prescribed in the UK
- •While working in Paris she ran out of meds and couldn’t get more in time—her ‘sideways’ decision
- •Instead of torturing herself over poor planning, she chose to accept she’d struggle for a bit and stop catastrophizing
- •Shares Reuben’s idea that time can ‘arrange itself before you’—if you stop obsessively manipulating your calendar, things often fall into place
- •She no longer fixates on whether every minute is used in the ‘most productive’ way, prioritizing enjoying the journey instead
- 2:04:40
Mother–Daughter Dynamics and Final Reflections
Maisie reflects on her evolving relationship with her mother, from codependent travel companion to more individuated adult connection. The episode ends with mutual appreciation: Steven praises Maisie’s purity and courage; she highlights his authenticity and skill as an interviewer.
- •Her mum supported her dream unconditionally and traveled with her globally from ages ~12–17
- •They were extremely close during years when many teens reject their parents as ‘uncool’
- •Adulthood has meant renegotiating boundaries, independence, and letting some struggles be hers alone
- •Talking to her mother about the past has been painful, because it surfaces the mother’s pain too
- •Maisie admits she was anxious about being this open, especially because her story involves others, but chose honesty to fill the ‘missing piece’ in her public narrative
- •They close with a candid exchange of gratitude and recognition of the podcast’s impact
