Maisie Williams has already had quite the stellar career in her young life. She came bursting onto the scene when she was just 14, with her starring role on the mega-hit fantasy series Game of Thrones giving her a number of fans who were impressed with both her talent and how she brought one of the story's most intriguing characters to life. But, while Williams had eight seasons and nine years to let GOT help mold her as a performer, she was already looking ahead to what her career might be like afterward. And, it turns out that she looked to Twilight stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson to help her see the way forward.
Maisie Williams can currently been seen in the long awaited superhero horror film The New Mutuants, but while that movie was filmed during her time on the successful HBO series which made her famous, her true first project after that show was over is the new independent film, The Owners. During a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Williams was asked if the thriller was a sign that she'd be looking to fill her post-Thrones career with more independent projects, much like Pattinson and Stewart did after the Twilight franchise wrapped up, and she answered:
I would say absolutely [about going the indie route]. I mean, the industry is very different to what it was when Twilight ended in that television has skyrocketed recently and not as many indie films are being made. The people who have these really wonderful indie stories have now started stretching them out and making them into TV shows because it’s more likely to get made. There are still indie filmmakers, and I have been meeting with a lot of them. But if there are enough indie movies who want to cast me, then yes, you can say that I will be doing indies for a long time. (Laughs.) But I know that the industry is different now, and so I have to be weary of that, also.
I think it would be pretty hard for anyone who's been paying attention to the entertainment industry to argue with what Maisie Williams has said. The last Twilight movie was released in 2012 (the year after GOT fame began for Williams) and in the eight years since, TV and movies have changed more than most of us could have guessed they would. TV has become the place to be for many creatives, largely because the number of channels and streaming services has grown to the point where there are a lot more ways to get your stories to the masses, even if someone is looking to tell a slightly oddball story that would have been seen as a no-go just a few years ago.
But, as Williams noted, there are still people who would rather have their stories told via the big screen experience, and she's decided that working with as many of those indie filmmakers as possible is what's best for her career right now. Some of her desire to stick with indie film comes from having watched what Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson did when they were able to fully step away from Twilight, because each of them decided to go the indie route to shake things up, instead of trying to stick with big, potential blockbuster franchises.
Williams added that she's taken a lot of inspiration from the former Twilight stars, and is actively paying attention to the moves they've made after leaving that mega-franchise behind:
But, yeah, I look up to Robert Pattinson, and I look up to Kristen Stewart. I love what they did. I mean, I love what Kristen Stewart did before Twilight, but I really have watched so many of her movies since. I’ve really just been trying to understand what she did so well, the decisions she made and how that really affected the longevity of her career. So, yeah, I definitely do look up to the both of them, and yeah, I will be taking notes and following in their footsteps.
Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart have both spent most of their careers after Twilight doing a series of small, independent movies, and it might be, at least in part, because of that that they've both managed to keep finding projects that interest them and are (hopefully) mutually fulfilling for both them and the filmmakers they've worked with. Of course, Stewart took a step back toward potential blockbusters with last year's Charlie's Angels, and Pattinson will be our next big screen version of the Dark Knight in The Batman, which has probably shown Maisie Williams that there's no harm in heading back to films which will likely have more eyeballs on them, even after she gets her indie cred.
You can catch Maisie Williams in The New Mutants and The Owners right now, but for more on what to watch in the coming weeks, check out our 2020 movie schedule!
