‘I was gunning for Cardi B to walk me down the aisle,’ Sophie Turner says, reminiscing about her wedding to Joe Jonas three years ago. In case you missed her friend Diplo live-streaming the ceremony on Instagram, it was conducted by an Elvis impersonator in a Vegas chapel after the Billboard Music Awards. Turner might have failed in her mission to get fellow attendee Cardi to join her, but that didn’t dampen the party atmosphere on the night. ‘We went around inviting random people we’d met at the awards and were like, “You can come, you can come...” It was so wild. So fun. So awesome!’
Cut to today and Turner is talking to me from her hotel room in New York, where she is staying with her now-husband and their one-year-old daughter. The family are in New York for 24 hours as Jonas is appearing on Jimmy Fallon’s The Tonight Show. Tomorrow, they’ll fly back to their home in Miami.
‘I used to be so rock ’n’ roll and spontaneous,’ she fake sighs. ‘I’m sure there’s a part of me that’s still like that, deep down. But becoming a mum, you just become way less cool. I’m like an old woman.’
When we speak, via video call, Turner’s long auburn hair is tied into two low pigtails that fall either side of her face and onto a blue hoodie that covers a blooming baby bump. She is pregnant with her second child and lights up at the mention of it. ‘It’s what life is about for me – raising the next generation,’ she says, smiling. ‘The greatest thing in life is seeing my daughter go from strength to strength. We’re so excited to be expanding the family. It’s the best blessing ever.’
Now that the couple’s first daughter is nearly two, I wonder if she understands that she’s about to become a big sister. ‘I don’t think so,’ Turner says. ‘I’ll point to my stomach and say, “What’s in there?” And she’ll go, “Baby”. But then she points to her own stomach and says, “Baby”, and then she’ll point to her dad’s tummy and say, “Baby”. So, I think she just thinks that a belly is a baby and that’s the name for it. But she is a lot clingier than normal, so I think she has an idea. She wants Mummy all of the time – she’s claiming her territory.’
With a second child on the way, a long-standing ambassadorship with Louis Vuitton and a career that spans over a decade, it is very easy to forget that Turner is just 26 years old. She has been on our television screens since she was 15 as Sansa Stark (‘the Queen of the North!’) on Game of Thrones, the fantasy series based on George RR Martin’s books, for which she was nominated for an Emmy. The show itself won 59 in total over its run, and its finale, which aired in 2019, was watched by 19.3 million viewers.
We went around inviting random people we’d met at the awards
In the years since, she’s fitted in roles in everything from the X-Men movies to voicing Princess Charlotte on Gary Janetti’s animated series The Prince, and her latest project, The Staircase, will air on Sky this month. It’s a lot. So much so that even Turner sometimes forgets her age. ‘When my friends come around, I’m like, “Oh my God, you guys keep me so young”,’ she says, laughing. ‘We’re all only 25 or 26. I have to remind myself that I’m in my mid-twenties. I’m a child.’
Turner grew up in Chesterton, a village in Warwickshire, with her parents, Sally and Andrew, and two older brothers. In her spare time, she attended a local theatre group, but landed the Game of Thrones job through her school. She would travel to Belfast every June for six months to film her scenes, at first with her mother as a chaperone and then, after she turned 16, alone. The rest of the year, she’d go to school as normal. ‘I never really felt like I was doing anything different,’ she says. ‘People would be going away on really long holidays over the summer... and I’d go to Belfast to work.’
They treated her like an adult on the Game of Thrones set. ‘The producers, runners and actors raised me, alongside my parents, but they raised me more in a business sense and to be an independent working woman. It was a very formative time in my life. At 16, I felt like I was a fully fledged adult.’
Turner is nostalgic about the show. She even has a Game of Thrones tattoo on her inner arm, below her left elbow (it’s a direwolf, the symbol of House Stark, her character’s family), and she flashes it at me via her laptop. Of Sansa, she says, ‘She’s still a big part of me. She’ll always be a part of me.’
With GoT came recognition. Turner now remembers the first time she realised she was famous. She was still living at home with her parents. ‘I was 18 and would visit my friends at university. People would come knock on my friend’s door and it was weird. I had to be a little more private from then on.’ She left home that same year to move in with friends in North London. But she received a lot more attention there than back in Warwickshire. ‘Once I moved, the privacy just kind of faded away,’ she says.
During that time – 2016 – she met Jonas. The pair married the same year GoT came to an end. It was symbolic. ‘I’m quite glad I had that next thing to move on to. If I hadn’t found Joe, I think I would have felt quite lost after Game of Thrones. And I did feel quite lost after it finished. But it forced me into this new chapter, which was really exciting and something for me to focus on. It was the perfect thing to move on to.’
She is still close to people from that time, including Kit Harington, who played her half-brother Jon Snow. ‘Kit has a baby [too], so we’ve managed to see each other quite a bit, which has been nice. We’ve both moved on to another step in our lives together.’
Professionally, she has also moved on, and The Staircase, her first big role since having her daughter in 2020, was filmed last year in Atlanta. A dramatisation of the hit Netflix documentary, it focuses on the real 2001 case of novelist Michael Peterson (played by Colin Firth), whose wife Kathleen (Toni Collette) died after she fell down the stairs of their home. Peterson soon became a murder suspect.
In the show, Turner plays Peterson’s adopted daughter Margaret Ratliff. ‘I was completely obsessed with the documentary and binged it,’ she says. ‘Because it’s a real woman’s family, there is that intrigue and excitement, but it’s also quite harrowing to be a part of. You’re living those characters.’
She still can’t get over working with Firth. ‘It’s like I won a contest,’ she admits. ‘Michael Peterson has very specific mannerisms. Watching Colin transform into him was amazing. It’s very different from the suave Colin we know and love.’ Later this year, she also has a cameo appearance in Strangers, a Netflix dark comedy starring Maya Hawke, filmed during time off in Atlanta. ‘It was fun. I hadn’t really done comedy before, but it was incredibly freeing. I will try to do more.’
In the future, Turner would like to do more films. ‘I’ve done the big franchises. So now, because I don’t have all the time in the world, if I want to commit to something on TV, it would have to be special. I want to move forward with the weirder things. To go, “That was crazy, and unlike anything I’ve ever done before.” That’s what excites me about the film industry, especially with places like A24 [the production company behind The Tragedy of Macbeth and Lady Bird]. That’s the kind of world I want to live in. But I’m still figuring myself out as an actor.’
There is a lot more to think about when it comes to the jobs she takes. Which is why, last year – when she landed The Staircase – she moved the whole family to Atlanta and lived there for nine months.
I’ve done the big franchises. I want to move forward with the weirder things
‘It’s difficult, because I’m someone who doesn’t like change. I like consistency and, with the job I have, it’s not attainable. So, I move everything – my daughter, my entire house! There is no more staying in hotel rooms. We get a house and commit to it. I couldn’t not go home to my daughter at the end of the day. Joe’s job is bouncing around from city to city every night. I have a longer amount of time in one place, so it makes sense for me to have her with me.’
The rare moments when Turner is at their home base in Florida, she makes the most of the downtime. ‘We’re very lucky to live in Miami. We have good weather and live by the water. We try to keep it as chill as possible and just cherish those times, because we don’t get them very often. We travel around so much.’ To keep her house in Miami a little like her home in Warwickshire, she’s developed a habit of always keeping British food in the cupboards. ‘I buy stuff from the British Marketplace. In the States, the chocolate ain’t good, the crisps ain’t good. It’s not the same. I need my Bisto gravy – all the good sh*t!’
Turner is desperate to keep some semblance of normality for her daughter, and finds the attention on her family difficult. ‘I’m very protective of the life we’ve built. Every time Joe and I do a red carpet together, we make sure it’s for the right reason and makes sense for our careers. You never want to market yourself as a celebrity couple. It’s not that cool.
Social media makes me incredibly anxious
‘And my daughter never asked for any of this. I know what it can do to your mental health to be in this industry, and to be photographed every day and have the comments. It’s not something I want her to deal with unless she says, “This is what I want to do.” We’re quite strict about that. We’ll encourage her to do whatever she wants but I don’t think we would professionally let her do anything until she’s 18. I also feel quite strongly about my daughter not becoming a nepotism child.’
Turner admits that being in the public eye has had a big impact on her own mental health, and that social media has had a negative effect on her body image. ‘I have a love-hate relationship with social media. I wish I’d never got myself involved with it in the first place,’ she sighs. ‘I look at the comments on Instagram and think, Oh, f*ck. Everyone thinks this about me. It would completely consume me. The best advice I ever got...’ She takes a pause, gazing at her lap and choosing her words carefully, before looking up again.
‘For a long time, I was quite sick with an eating disorder and I had a companion. I don’t know if you know what a companion is? It’s a live-in therapist, who would ensure I wasn’t doing anything unhealthy with my eating habits.
‘One night, I was playing over and over in my mind a comment I’d seen on Instagram. I was like, “I’m so fat, I’m so undesirable,” and spinning out. She said to me, “You know, no one actually cares. I know you think this, but nobody else is thinking it. You’re not that important.”’ This comment completely changed her outlook. ‘That was the best thing anyone could have told me,’ Turner says.
She recently decided to delete the Instagram app from her phone, which has been transformative. ‘I have noticed that social media makes me incredibly anxious and it’s something I try to distance myself from,’ she says. ‘Having it off my phone has been so helpful. Now, if I do have to go on it, it’s for a few minutes once or twice a week, rather than hours every day. It’s made such a difference. Live real life – it’s much more fun.’
She’s a staunch believer in therapy and has regular sessions. ‘I still have to do it every week. Occasionally, I go on a retreat to check myself, and I still have days when I feel depressed or anxious. It’s manageable now – I have the tools. I know what’s good for me and what’s not good for me. I know what I have to do to get myself in a good headspace. It’s not debilitating – I know how to get myself out of it.’
Being around her friends and family in the UK helps. Turner has spent much of the last month in Europe: a trip to Paris Fashion Week for the Louis Vuitton show, some time back home with her parents, and a stop-off in London for the ELLE cover shoot. She’s keen for a permanent move back in the UK. ‘I miss England so much,’ she says. ‘The people, the attitude, everything. I’m slowly dragging my husband back. I really love living in America but, for my mental health, I have to be around my friends and my family. And also for my daughter – I would love her to get the education and school life that I was so lucky to have. England would ideally be the final destination, but [Joe] might take quite a bit of convincing! My parent’s house is the epitome of the English countryside – horses, sheep, cows...’
Right now, however, she has other places to be. It’s 11am and she’s off to a class with her daughter. ‘We’re going to take her to a bubble party and then eat our way round New York. Then Joe’s going on Fallon, and I’m going to go say hello.’
This is the Turner paradox: Fallon appearances and fighting for privacy. Hollywood red carpets and Warwickshire roast dinners. Vuitton gowns and tracksuit hoodies. On and off social media. Young in age, old in soul. But, as she leaves, looking forward to a day that can contain both sides of who she is, she’s showing that she’s finding herself in the spaces in between.
This article appears in the June 2022 issue of ELLE UK, out now.
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