Joe Dempsie felt uncomfortable shooting a sex scene with Maisie Williams.
The 31-year-old actor – who plays the newly-appointed Lord Gendry Baratheon in ‘Game of Thrones’ – saw his character bed Arya Stark in episode two of the current final season of the drama and he admitted it was a "strange" experience because he’s known his 22-year-old co-star since she was a child.
He said: "It was strange for me having known [Maisie] since she was 11 or 12 years old and being asked to play out a scene like that.
"That discomfort I had initially seemed to have been shared by quite a lot of people who have watched that episode, too.
"But I found the subsequent conversation actually really quite interesting. What that scene ended up doing was forcing people to confront their own hypocrisy in a way.
"I think the root cause of that unease and discomfort in a lot of viewers is because they feel like they’ve seen her grow up on screen.
"That’s something that happens to us all–we all start off young and then the majority of us start having sex and we’re all perfectly capable to finding that journey out for ourselves. But we still find it difficult to watch someone else take that journey, say, on a TV screen."
And Joe admitted he has felt uneasy for years about fans wanting to quiz him on the prospect of a romance between Gendry and Arya.
He told Esquire magazine: "The most common thing ‘Thrones’ fans have wanted to talk to me about over the years was this suggested relationship with Arya.
"I was always found that conversation quite uncomfortable at the time, particularly in the early years. I was a 25-year-old man being asked whether I would like my character to get together with an at-the-time 14-year-old actress.
"It was always something I thought wasn’t fair to ask me personally … I felt there needed to be an understanding that even though what we’re making is fantasy, actual execution of that had to take place in reality. It was never really something I gave much thought to."
Joe Dempsie uncomfortable with GoT sex scene
