Actress Maisie Williams has talked openly about her traumatic childhood relationship with her father as a child.
Williams discussed her past before becoming a Game of Thrones star and how the trauma she experienced as a young child has impacted her current mental health difficulties in a recent interview on the Diary Of A CEO podcast.
She confessed to host Steven Bartlett, “I, as a young child before the age of eight, had quite a traumatic relationship with my dad,”
Williams added that she don’t really want to go into too much details because it may affect her siblings and the whole family. She concluded that the whole incident consumed the majority of her childhood.
Williams noted that due to her upbringing, she was distanced from other kids her age.
“Ever since I can remember, I've really struggled sleeping and I think a lot the traumatic things that were happening I didn't realise that they were wrong,” Williams said.
Williams mentioned that she would look at other kids and wonder why don’t they understand the pain, dread and fear that she was going through. She also wondered when would she experience joy like the other kids.
Williams claims that she has been “learning a lot about” her mother's “escape” from her father when the actor was just four months old.
The New Mutants actor didn't realise how bad her connection with her father was until she was eight years old.
She remembered having trouble in school and being pulled away by a teacher one day for some questioning.
“(S)he was saying, like, ‘What's wrong?,' you know, like, ‘What's happened? Are you hungry? … ‘Did you eat breakfast?' I said, ‘No.' And she said, ‘Oh, why not?' And I said, ‘We just don't have any breakfast.' And then she says, you know, ‘Do you normally have breakfast?' … They were asking all the right questions.”
Williams recalls that following the incident, “all of the doors were sort of open, and all of these things that we were experiencing were out on the table.”
She continued, “I still wanted to argue and say these things aren't terrible, that you're just trying to take me away from my dad,” adding that she was reluctant to embrace the reality of her circumstance and wanted to meet her mother with scepticism.
She stated that she had been “indoctrinated” at a young age and that she was “in a kid cult” without going into much detail.
“I get it, I was in a child cult against my mother. So I was really fighting it at the beginning, but basically my whole world flipped on its head,” Williams said.
“And even though all these things I was feeling – ‘Oh, my God, I'm so glad I don't have to see my dad anymore' – it still was against everything I knew to be true.”
Williams stated that she is relieved that she is no longer required to deal with her father and that she has been figuring out how to deal with her past.
“It's not because of me that these bad things happened when I was a child,” she said. “I felt there was something inherently wrong with me, or us, because we did lots of things wrong all the time, which is why you'd be mistreated. … Especially because it was a parent, and they're supposed to like you.”
Williams didn't go into much detail about specific instances with her father, but she did say that after reflecting on their relationship, she has grown more “curious” in how his mind works.
“What could make you mistreat your own children? What happened to you as a kid? Did you pull the legs off bugs? Did you learn all this?” she said. “That's how I feel about him now. He would make a fascinating documentary.” – Los Angeles Times/Tribune News Service
