Sophie Turner, who played the character of Sansa Stark in the HBO series Game of Thrones, talks about how she coped with the trauma of shooting most disturbing scenes at such a young age.
Now, 26-years old actor reflected upon her coping mechanism on the set of Game of Thrones and what was like shooting perhaps some of the best, most disturbing, and controversial scenes of the show.
The thing is, when Turner landed the role of Sansa Stark for the show, she was just 15 years old, and indeed, George R. R Martin’s novel series of A Song of Ice and Fire adapted series made her a huge success in the industry.
Sophie had a lot of traumatic subject matter to perform on, especially in the season when she was the youngest, age 15, of her overall journey of the show.
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Her character Sansa was forced to get married to two of the most psychotic and sadistic characters in the series: Joffrey Baratheon and Ramsay Bolton.
There are numerous scenes of simply verbal and physical harassment of her character by Joffrey, especially with Ramsay.
Remember the scene where Joffrey physically abused Sansa around the scene of Ned Stark, her father’s beheading, and further putting her father’s head on the spike?
Then, there is too much with Ramsay Bolton, all the sexual abuse, slapping, man-handling, and much more. Not to forget, him sending his man-eating dogs after her.
Sophie Turner talks about her character and how emotionally taxing it was while performing those scenes.
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Fortunately, she also shares her ‘coping mechanisms to deal with this trauma as how she managed to stay still, relax and chill after intense scenes.
In an interview given to The Cut, Sophie Turns talks to Jessica Chaste about all this, talking about how she has developed a coping mechanism that helped her get out of the character even further in her career.
When chaste asked her about how she gets into a character and how she gets out of it, whether she has some ritual to do so, Sophie said this –
“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. 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.”
Chaste further ask her whether the trauma still affects her and how she deals with it; on that Sophie answers.
“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.”
She revealed that she also used the coping mechanism learned on the sets of Game of Thrones while shooting for X-men.
Sophie Turner, apart from her role as Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones, is also known for playing Jean Gray in X-men movies.
She recently played the protagonist in another HBO Max mini-series, The Staircase, a true crime drama about a writer convicted for murdering her wife, who was found dead at the bottom of the staircase in their home.
Sophie plays the character of Margret Ratliff, Michae’s daughter in this series that received positive reviews from critics and the audience.
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