Sophie Turner Says Social Media ‘Almost Destroyed’ Her as a Young Actress

Sophie Turner – Credit: Marc Piasecki/WireImage

Sophie Turner regrets being online after joining Game of Thrones as a teenager. The actress, who was 14 when she joined the cast as Sansa Stark, admitted that social media took a toll on her mental health during her early years as an actress.

“I think social media was just really becoming a big thing after I started on Game of Thrones, so I got a couple of years of peace and quiet and then I had to adjust,” she said in a new interview with Flaunt. “It had such a profound impact on my mental health, like more than I could tell you. It almost destroyed me on numerous occasions.”

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She told Flaunt that she suffered from anxiety, depression, and an eating disorder during that time period, noting that therapy is what helped her come out of it. “One of the most important things to me in my life is talking about mental health: it’s vital,” she said.

The actress said she’s especially worried about the stars of HBO’s forthcoming Harry Potter reboot, which recently began filming. The young cast includes Dominic McLaughlin as Harry Potter, Arabella Stanton as Hermione Granger, and Alastair Stout as Ron Weasley.

“I look at the kids who are about to be in the new Harry Potter and I just want to give them a hug and say, ‘Look, it’s going to be okay but don’t go anywhere near [social media],’” she said. “Stay friends with your home friends, keep living at home with your family, make sure your parents are your chaperones—it’s so important to have that grounding adjacent to the big, crazy stuff that you do.’”

Turner added that she won’t allow her daughters, who she shares with ex-husband Joe Jonas, to follow in her footsteps. “Oh God, they’re not acting!” she told Flaunt. “Not until they’re at least 25!”

Elsewhere in the interview she spoke about her new film, Trust, and her experiences on Game of Thrones, including the scene in which Sansa was sexually assaulted by her husband Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon). Turner was 19 years old when the episode aired.

“I did feel—and still do—that Game of Thrones shone a light on things that many people were like ‘Oh god, you can’t show that kind of thing’—and I understand it can be triggering—I totally understand that point of view,” she said. “But I did feel we were actually doing a lot of justice to women and the fight women have had to fight for hundreds of thousands of years—the patriarchy, being treated as objects, and being constantly sexually assaulted—I don’t think there’s one woman I know who hasn’t had a form of that.”

She added, “I think if Game of Thrones came out today, we’d definitely put some trigger warnings on there. But I’m really proud to have been a part of Game of Thrones where they didn’t shy away from showing atrocities that happened to women back then. I feel proud to have been part of the conversation.”

Trust, in theaters now, sees Turner playing a scandalized Hollywood star in search of privacy. Things go perilously wrong when she secludes herself in a remote house. Director Carlson Young (Upgraded, The Blazing World) helmed the picture, which is based on a screenplay by Gigi Levangie (Stepmom, the novel The Starter Wife). The cast also includes Rhys Coiro, Forrest Goodluck, Gianni Paolo, Renata Vaca, and Katey Sagal.

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