Game of Thrones fans weren’t the only ones at a loss after the hit HBO fantasy drama series ended its eight-season run in 2019. For Sophie Turner, who spent her adolescence playing Sansa Stark, it was a challenging transition. In her January cover interview for Porter, the actor described going through “a bit of an identity crisis” afterward.
Time To Process
Turner landed her Game of Thrones role in 2009, when she was just 13. Following the show’s conclusion a decade later, she was left with big questions about herself and what to do next.
“I think I had a bit of an identity crisis and needed to step away entirely from that world for a couple of years,” she told Porter. “It was like a death, that show finishing. We all had to go away and process it a bit. I needed time to figure out who I was, what I wanted, who I was as an actor.”
Her early start in the working world complicated matters, as she explained in a 2019 Glamour interview. “I hadn’t been able to experience university, or just spend a lot of time with friends, so for a while I kept thinking, ‘Who am I?’” she said. Turner has also opened up about the impact on her mental health in recent years.
Returning To Her Roots
For years post-Game of Thrones, Turner told Porter, her policy was “no medieval projects, no period pieces.” However, she was finally ready to break that rule when she found the script for her upcoming gothic horror film, The Dreadful. The 2024 shoot gave her a stark reminder of the rough parts of those projects: “You’re outside a lot, you’re in dresses that are too cold, and you get mud everywhere.”
One bright spot of filming The Dreadful, on the other hand, was working with her Game of Thrones co-star Kit Harington again. As she explained during an August episode of Late Night with Seth Meyers, she sent him the script and they both thought it was too good to pass on, even though they’d be in the uncomfortable position of playing love interests after years of portraying half-siblings.
Turner recalled Harington telling her it would be “really f*cking weird” — and just how true this proved to be. “It’s the first kissing scene, and we are both retching,” she told Meyers. “Like, really, it is vile. It was the worst.”
Aside from that awkwardness, her reunion with Harington was a homecoming of sorts. “We have this unspoken dialogue,” she said in her Porter interview. “I can read him and he can read me. It grounded me, having him on set. It brought me back to being a 13-year-old who didn’t know anything about the industry.”
