Taylor Swift Reveals the Badass ‘Game of Thrones’ Character She Identifies With

Winter is coming … swiftly. Named to The Hollywood Reporter‘s 2022 Women In Entertainment Power 100, Taylor Swift revealed to the publication Wednesday (Dec. 7) that the fictional character she identifies a lot with is Game of Thrones‘ Arya Stark.

“I realize I don’t know how to use a sword and I’ve never had to rise up from near death to go on an epic revenge mission,” quipped the 32-year-old pop star. “But I have been in the music industry for over 15 years, so …”

This isn’t the first time Swift has shared her love for HBO’s hit fantasy drama. In fact, she once revealed that her 2017 album Reputation was inspired, in part, by Arya and her sister, Sansa Stark. “So much of my imagination was spent on Game of Thrones,” she told Entertainment Weekly in 2019. “At the time, I was making reputation and I didn’t talk about it in interviews, so I didn’t reveal that a lot of the songs were influenced by the show.”

The single “Look What You Made Me Do,” for example, is “literally Arya Stark’s kill list,” according to Swift. And “I Did Something Bad”? Inspired by a GoT plot line in which Arya and Sansa — played by Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner, respectively — conspire to kill another character on the show, Littlefinger.

The 11-time Grammy winner also shared in the Women in Entertainment Power piece which Hollywood figure she’d like to trade places with. Instead of naming a fellow singer-songwriter, she shouted out director Guillermo Del Toro.

“Imagine having that imagination, that visual vocabulary and that astonishing body of work,” she said of the Shape of Water filmmaker. “To have such a diverse storytelling range but to somehow put your distinctive artistic fingerprint on every film. And yet, it feels like he’s still so curious and enthusiastic about his work. I can only imagine that a day in his mind would be fascinating.”

Mindy Kaling, who was also featured on the Women in Entertainment Power list, had a much different answer to the same question. She said she’d like to trade places with Tay’s assistant, because “you know they got seats to her concert.”