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As one of the two youngest main cast members (along with Maisie Williams) of the HBO high fantasy series Game of Thrones, Sophie Turner, who played the elder Stark daughter Sansa, recognizes she had to mature more quickly than others due to the show’s more adult-oriented nature. While promoting her HBO Max series The Staircase, the actress opened up about her time on the critically-acclaimed series to her X-Men: Dark Phoenix co-star Jessica Chastain for The Cut.
Photo courtesy of HBO
“It’s amazing because I think for ten years, I felt like I needed to be the person that everyone else saw because I was growing up and I didn’t know anything else,” Turner said. “Other than the character that I was playing in ‘Game of Thrones’ and then other people’s perceptions of me, I didn’t have time to figure out who I was as a person. And so when ‘Game of Thrones’ ended, I started developing, like, a personal life and then finally a taste for what I actually wanted to do in my work and things like that. I feel like I’m only on the beginning of my journey of evolving into a person I probably should have evolved into about ten years ago.” The actresses also compared their lives outside of Hollywood.
“I think not being afforded that, but I also think when you are 13, 14, 15, you get caught up in social media like any other kid,” Turner said. “I felt I overexposed myself to the point where I welcomed everything in and everyone in on their opinions. Now, I think I would fight harder than I ever have to try and protect that. I also think it’s not good for an actor to overexpose yourself. It’s important to have a sense of anonymity so that people can see you as other characters and believe it and not know you as just like, ‘Oh, Sophie.'” As far as going in and out of character, she broke down her dramatically different experiences from Dark Phoenix to Game of Thrones.
“It’s so weird. I don’t, but I kind of find it quite easy to go in and out. You saw on ‘X-Men’, in between takes, singing and dancing together,” Turner said. “It does help having people around that are also willing to step out of it as well. And it’s just something that growing up on a show like ‘Game of Thrones,’ the subject matter was so heavy that I just developed a coping mechanism of just having the most fun in between takes, so I wouldn’t get traumatized. I’m sure I’ll exhibit some symptoms of trauma down the road. At that age, I don’t think I could comprehend a lot of the scene matter. And the first few years, I had my mom with me because she was chaperoning me, so she would be very helpful and give me snacks. I don’t know what it is, but I feel like a 10-year-old in a school play again when someone that I know comes and sees me on set. I feel so embarrassed.” One such controversial and trauma-inducing scene was the off-screen assault from Sansa’s husband Ramsey (Iwan Rheon).
For more on The Staircase, which streams Thursdays on HBO Max, and their careers, you can check out the whole interview here.
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