Sophie Turner was just 15 years old when she was cast as Sansa Stark in the HBO fantasy series Game Of Thrones. She would be one of the few cast members to appear in all eight seasons. Like most characters in Game of Thrones, Sansa was subject to many horrible experiences during its eight seasons. She was raped, tortured, abused, and beaten throughout Game Of Thrones’ eight seasons.
In an interview with Jessica Chastain for The Cut in 2021, the actress explained how she will ‘probably exhibit some signs of trauma in the future’ due to what she was exposed to while shooting the hugely-popular fantasy drama but admitted she didn’t “comprehend” the severity of the difficult subject matters at the time.
“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,” she said. “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.”
Turner also discussed how she found her identity after ten years playing the part and how she broke free from being ‘the person that everyone else saw’.
“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. 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,” she said. “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.”
