There are a number of popular reasons for changing your hair: the big post-breakup haircut, the one misguided urge you get in high school to "stand out," or when you just want to transition back to your natural curls. Now, Maisie Williams is giving us an entirely new reason to run to our stylists: the "don't @ me" dye job.
The world will be waving a sad goodbye to Arya Stark as the final season of Game of Thrones airs next month, and for Williams, dyeing her hair pink was her own way of leaving Arya behind. The actress revealed in a new interview with Rolling Stone that the bold hair-colour change was a purposeful choice to claim her freedom — not just from the series she's spent the better part of the past decade filming, but from the industry as a whole.
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"I dyed it because I didn’t want to work,” Williams told the magazine, where she's featured as the cover star alongside on-screen sis Sophie Turner. “It’s a pretty good way of stopping that. And it just feels so good, so me. I’ve battled my whole adolescence with trying to put a stamp on my appearance, but also be a blank canvas as an actor.”
And why opt for pink to make that statement? Well, it's Williams' favourite — even if she didn't want to admit it at first. "I love pink so much. For so long I pretended that my favourite colour was green," she says. "I thought I wasn’t a feminist if my favourite colour was pink. And then I decided that’s fucking stupid.”
The 21-year-old first debuted her light-pink hair on Instagram back in November, and has been rocking it ever since. She hasn't been the only GoT star to switch up her look after wrapping the series: Emilia Clarke showed off a new pixie cut around the same time (which has since grown out into a bob), and Kit Harington shed Jon Snow's iconic curls.
Sophie Turner hasn't shown off any major hair changes just yet — but as she admitted to us earlier this year, Williams' pink shade was giving her all kinds of inspiration. "Maisie [Williams] dyed her hair bright pink, and I kind of love that, so I'm thinking a pastel colour, like a green or blue," she told Refinery29. The actresses may no longer be co-stars, but even off-screen, the pack stands strong.