BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF. — It’s a bright afternoon here, and Arya and Sansa Stark are singing.

The song is “Stay With Me” by Sam Smith, and the British actresses Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner, who play the Stark daughters on HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” are managing about as well as most of us might.

The young women, friends since their first audition together, are cavorting through a rare joint photo shoot near the end of a week of parties and press in California to promote the fantasy epic’s much anticipated fifth season, which begins April 12. The sparkling sunshine makes the gloom of Winterfell, the Stark ancestral home, seem meteorologically impossible.

“We should do more shoots together — that was fun,” Ms. Turner said during an interview afterward. “Just do like the cover of Vogue, or something small like that.” She was joking, but don’t bet against it. Because while Ms. Turner, 19, and Ms. Williams, 17, spent the early years of “Game of Thrones” stuck at the kids’ table — their characters under various oppressive thumbs and the actors themselves left behind as co-stars jetted to Comic-Con — their current story is one of emergence, both on the show and off.

The new season finds the Stark girls transforming into drivers of the action, joining a coterie of female “Thrones” characters coming to power. Though the show has taken heat for scenes of sexual violence against women and abundant nudity, “Game of Thrones” has also been notable from the start for its strong female roles.