Sophie Turner is getting candid about one of the toughest parts of becoming a global star through ‘Game of Thrones‘. While fans watched her grow up as Sansa Stark over eight seasons, the actress says the spotlight came with relentless criticism that slowly chipped away at her confidence.
Looking back, Turner revealed that the constant body-shaming and harsh comments about her appearance made her incredibly self-conscious, both on and off the set.
Sophie Turner Says ‘Game of Thrones’ Fans Constantly Criticized Her
Turner recently got real about the online hate she received while starring as Sansa Stark in ‘Game of Thrones‘. Since she joined the show as a teenager, she says people constantly picked apart everything from her weight to her skin and even her acting.
Sharing what she went through, Turner said, “The character that I play on my show is called Sansa, and people used to write like, oh, damn, Sansa gained 10 pounds, or Sansa needs to lose 10 pounds, or Sansa got fat. Yeah. It was just a lot of weight comments. Or I would have like spotty skin because I was a teenager, and that’s normal, and I used to get a lot of comments about my skin and my weight, and how I wasn’t a good actress, and things like that. I used to get called wooden a lot.”
When she was asked if those comments hurt, Turner did not sugarcoat it. She admitted she completely believed what strangers were saying. “I would just believe it. I would just say, yeah, I am spotty, I am fat, I am a bad actress, and I just believed it.”
The Hurtful Comments Even Changed The Way She Filmed Scenes
Reading all those negative comments did not just ruin her mood. Turner revealed they actually changed how she behaved on set. Instead of fully stepping into Sansa’s world, she became super conscious about how she looked on camera.
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Talking about those days, she said, “Well, I’d get them to tighten my corset a lot. I’d be, tighten me. Got a foot in your back, pull. Yeah, basically. I just got very, very self-conscious.”
Things did not stop there. Turner shared that she became obsessed with finding the “right” camera angle because people often mocked her appearance. “But I would be concerned about angles, I’d be concerned about my face. I have a big nose, and everyone used to love to tell me that. And so I would be like, I don’t know how to angle myself, and it would just affect me creatively.”
Not every comment hit her the same way. Turner said the criticism about her acting actually pushed her to experiment more and keep improving. Instead of giving up, she looked for new ways to grow as a performer. “I actually wasn’t angry about the fact that people said I was wooden because it kind of inspired me to try new methods of acting and things like that, so I wasn’t that mad about that,” she explained.
Even so, the body-shaming stayed with her for a long time. Turner admitted she spent so much energy worrying about how Sophie looked on screen that she struggled to fully become Sansa. “And I couldn’t be true to the character because I was so worried about Sophie.”
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