Maisie Williams From ‘Game Of Thrones’ Will Play A Cyberbullying Victim In A New TV Special

Channel 4 in England is teaming with a group of award-winning directors and producers to make an hour-long one-off special called Cyber Bully, which aims to raise awareness about issues young people deal with online. And if you’re making a movie about cyberbullying, you need a cyberbullying victim. That cyberbully-ee? Arya Stark herself, 17-year-old Maisie Williams.

In Cyber Bully (w/t) Maisie Williams (Game of Thrones) is Casey Jacobs, a teenage girl battling with her anonymous cyber-stalker in a real-time thriller from the makers of Blackout. Casey is a teenager who experiences the worst the web has to offer – from peer-to-peer bullying to advanced computer hacking – and fights to overcome her ordeal.

The plot of Cyber Bully is inspired by dozens of real-life cases. What happens to Casey is extreme, and framed in a dramatic format, yet all the events depicted are possible and indeed have happened to victims individually.

Channel 4’s Head of Documentaries describes the special as “gripping, relevant and fiercely public service,” so it appears this is going to be more of a fancy, high-end PSA than a melodramatic Lifetime Original Movie about mean hacker teenz running amok and Tori Spelling and the PTA making them stop. Which, I mean, good. If bringing in a famous face and throwing some award winners at a serious project for public television has a chance to help out troubled kids, please, by all means, have at it.

There’s only one small problem here. It could be tough to separate Maisie Williams from Arya Stark. Like, I imagine some people (me) might spend the whole time waiting for her to snap and start running around and sliding a sword through her tormentors’ larynxes one by one. That’s probably not the right message to send cyberbullied teens. Good movie, would watch 100%, but probably the wrong message. Maybe next time.

Via The AV Club

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