At 9 o’clock on a Saturday morning, Sophie Turner opens the door of her hotel suite wearing a Kappa tracksuit, white socks and full cat’s-eye make-up. Behind her, large gold helium balloons spelling out HAPPY BIRTHDAY are pinned to the wall – she has just turned 23 – and hundreds more in pink, yellow, orange and purple are bouncing around gently, filling the rest of the space.
This is a surprise for anyone who knows Turner from her most famous role as Sansa Stark, one of the leading characters in the multi-award-winning, heart-stopping Game of Thrones, which combines the ruthless political machinations of House of Cards and the fantasy world of The Lord of the Rings, with extra sex and sadism. Its creator, George RR Martin, based his saga on the Wars of the Roses, and then added dragons and zombies. His books are well suited to the small screen because of the scriptwriters’ ear for clever dialogue, as well as their ruthless habit of killing off key characters in the most gruesome and unexpected fashion. Consequently, it is HBO’s most popular series ever, with about 30 million viewers an episode.
I am one of the most devoted: I have been watching since 2011, and am looking forward to the eighth and final series with feelings of combined anticipation and actual pain. There are people I can’t wait to see get their comeuppance, and others I dread watching fail and fall. "I’m just coming to terms with it right now, it’s like a death in the family," agrees Turner. "I’m losing the character I’ve played so long."
As Sansa’s sadistic husband Ramsay Bolton remarked, a few episodes before she fed him to his own hunting dogs: "If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention." Nobody leads a quiet life in Game of Thrones, but over its run, Sansa has had a particularly devastating time. She saw her father publicly executed; her mother and older brother were murdered, and she was raped and lost her home, but came out fighting.
"Initially, I didn’t feel there was anything that stayed with me from all the things Sansa went through," Turner says. "But though I think it hasn’t affected me emotionally, I did start thinking about the domestic abuse and rape, and it spurred this little part of me that might be an activist."
Turner’s own upbringing forms a reassuringly stable contrast. Her father is a logistics consultant, her mother a nursery-schoolteacher, and the family still lives in the village in Warwickshire where she was brought up. "I have two older brothers who are highly academic and I’m not at all," she explains. "I was always creative from the age of about two. My best friend and I used to put on plays every time we hung out. It became something my life revolved around." She joined amateur-theatre groups from the age of four – "It was like breathing to me" – and was a passionate ballet dancer, but turned down a place at White Lodge, the Royal Ballet School, because she couldn’t bear to give up her one-hour acting class at the weekend. "I think it was a good decision in the end," she says drily. "I’m a bit too tall and I like pasta too much, so I am not sure I would have gone all the way to prima ballerina." Instead, she joined the cast of Game of Thrones when she was 13.
Turner is silent on the eventual denouement of series eight, which finished filming last May, but she hasn’t been languishing. In 2015, she won the role of Jean Grey, a young telepath in the Marvel series X-Men, joining a very starry ensemble including Jennifer Lawrence, James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender. The latest film, Dark Phoenix, centres on Jean and her struggles to manage her powers. "She’s spiralling out of control and she can’t understand what’s happening to her. She has auditory and visual hallucinations, so we [she and the director Simon Kinberg] started to liken her mental state to schizophrenia. It was a way to ground the character and make her more relatable."
"The biggest thing I took away from this movie is what mental-health problems can do to a family and friends, and how people can walk away from you because it’s too painful to see." That experience, she says, "is everywhere. It’s just that we don’t talk about it. I have had a lot of people close to me who have struggled with their mental health, including myself, so it’s something I’m really passionate about. I have had people in my life who have been the lowest of the low, the bottom of this pit, and I’ve had to fly them out to America because they just can’t get the right help in the UK. In the US, they are more willing to talk about their emotions. Or at least, more willing to talk about mental health. In the UK, we have this mentality of 'chin up, get on with it, you’ll be fine'."
Understandably, perhaps, after two intense and long-running roles, Turner has taken the past five months off. "I’ve been trying to figure out what I like to do for myself," she says, touchingly. "It’s been 10 years of playing someone else, and doing what I’m told, and now I’m like 'Hmmm. Maybe I should find some hobbies.' I’m passionate about lots of things. I’ll sit in my house in New York and paint. And I’m doing ballet again."
She lives between Maida Vale in London and New York, with regular trips to Los Angeles where her two Alaskan Klee Kai puppies are currently staying. On Game of Thrones, Sansa owned a dire wolf (a huge, intelligent, mythological wolf ) until it was stabbed on the orders of her psychotic fiancé; in real life, Turner adopted Zunni, the Northern Inuit dog that played it. "Zunni was a terrible actor, really bad on set," she says. "She wouldn’t respond to any of my calls and everyone was ready to fire her, so we took her on when I was 14. She was about three feet tall and pretty big." Zunni lived till the age of 11, mostly with Turner’s long-suffering parents. The Klee Kais are, says Turner, ‘travel-sized versions’ and have pet passports, so they’re ready to accompany her to her next film.
Her sabbatical has also included various holidays, documented on Instagram to her 9.4 million followers, where she presents herself very much as she comes across in the flesh – fresh, bright, funny and thoughtful in turns. "If I faked it on Instagram, people would just call me out," she says, smiling. "Everyone can see what I’m really like in Game of Thrones. I have a big nose and tiny little eyes and a double chin and that’s OK. I’m learning to love my bumpy nose." For the record, she has none of these things. In Game of Thrones, her profile has a stern Pre-Raphaelite beauty, while in X-Men her look morphs into something more modern. In both films, though not in real life, she has flowing Titian hair. There has been a tremendous noise about this hair in the past, particularly when she revealed that the director of Game of Thrones had asked her not to wash it while Sansa was going through some particularly dark times.
"I know, it’s the most talked-about hair," she says, laughing. "There were moments when I was escaping Winterfell and running through woods and swimming through canals and they were like, 'Don’t wash your hair for the next two weeks.' And it was disgusting. From the social aspect, it was revolting. A lot of hats were involved." In later series, she wore a wig. It seems a little strange that she has spent her career to date playing redheads while being a blonde. "I know," she agrees. "People don’t seem to like me blonde. Maybe I look too much like an Instagram influencer. There are elements of dating a Jonas brother that mean you get photographed a lot, and so when people see me blonde, maybe they associate me with that rather than the characters I play. So they change up the hair."
Like any good millennial, Turner met Joe Jonas, her rock-star fiancé, on social media. "We had a lot of mutual friends," she explains, "and they’d been trying to introduce us for a long time. We were following each other on Instagram and he direct-messaged me one fine day, out of the blue." Jonas and two of his siblings make up the Jonas Brothers band, which has enjoyed huge success. Do his fans hate her? "Yeah, I guess so. It’s better now," she confesses. "His fans have gotten a bit older. If I’d been dating him during the years when he was appealing to the 14-year-old crowd, it might have been a bit more hostile." Jonas has to watch out too, though, as Game of Thrones aficionados are similarly defensive of their idols. "The people who watch the show are quite protective of me because they’ve seen me grow up. They write to him and say 'If you do anything to her...if you break her heart...' It’s sweet. I like it."
The couple have been together for two and a half years. "He’s lovely. He’s just the funniest. You wouldn’t expect he’s about to turn 30 this year. He’s the most fun, energetic, positive person I’ve ever seen. I’m pessimistic, so we balance each other out." It is Jonas, of course, who has decorated the room with all these balloons for a combined birthday party and Valentine’s surprise. They are going to be married soon. "We’re trying to keep it as low-key as possible so it’s more of an intimate thing," she says. "This year?" I ask. "Maybe."
No news, then, on what she’ll be wearing to get married, but Louis Vuitton is a good bet. Nicolas Ghesquière, the maison’s artistic director, is a friend, and Turner is an ambassador for the brand. "I love the way he sees women," she explains. "His clothes are like the characters I gravitate towards: warrior women. They are strong and empowering but also beautifully feminine." Ghesquière has gathered an enviable group of women around him, including Catherine Deneuve, Michelle Williams and Alicia Vikander. "It’s very exciting to be part of that crew," says Turner. "I like that he doesn’t choose people with that aesthetic that’s so popular on social media – the Instagram-model look of huge lips and skinny, long legs. He likes women to be a bit different, not your typical perfect Kardashian. I love to go on a red carpet and wear something that makes me feel like someone else. I want to be able to play dress-up."
Turner takes other aspects of her job more seriously than red-carpet preparation, and has begun to fight for the things she believes in. A passionate advocate of the #MeToo movement, she insists in all her contracts that there’s an inclusion rider, which means she can ensure a 50:50 male/female workforce. "Now, you see women in the camera departments, producing, directing. It’s exciting." Demanding equal pay, on the other hand, is "a little tricky. Kit [Harington, who plays her brother Jon Snow, the King in the North] got more money than me, but he had a bigger storyline. And for the last series, he had something crazy like 70 night shoots, and I didn’t have that many. I was like, 'You know what... you keep that money.'"
What’s important, she says, is that people are having those conversations about pay more readily and executives are "more willing to listen to people saying, 'I want the same amount of money.' So things are getting done, but it will take a while, I think..." As for her own experience of pre-Time’s Up mistreatment, "I’ve had moments where I’ve thought in hindsight, 'That was not an OK thing for someone to do,' but I’ve never had anything as extreme as these awful Weinstein cases. Almost half the people you meet in the industry have some sort of tale to tell. We’d talk about it before, but no one was saying, 'This is weird, someone should speak up.' People had this idea about Hollywood that it’s big and glamorous and crazy things happen and,'That’s showbiz, baby.' Until suddenly people started looking at it from a more humane point of view and saying, 'It’s not OK. It’s abuse'."
Now, she says, potential exploiters of power are definitely thinking twice. "I think everyone’s a bit terrified. Old men... who-ever’s committing these awful crimes. It’s not just being publicly shamed, it’s proper consequences. It’s losing your jobs and going to court. It’s great that these things have happened." At that, surrounded by balloons, sipping green tea curled up on on the sofa of her Mayfair suite, Sophie Turner suddenly looks as ruthless as Sansa Stark, a true warrior queen.
The May issue of Harper's Bazaar is on newsstands from 4 April. ‘X-Men: Dark Phoenix’ is released nationwide on 5 June.
