Sophie Turner recently told Flaunt magazine as part of a cover story that “Game of Thrones” was “actually doing a lot of justice to women” despite generating constant backlash during its run for putting its female characters through violent and/or sexually gratuitous scenes. Turner starred on all eight seasons of the HBO series as Sansa Stark. She was at the center of one of the show’s biggest controversies when Sansa was brutally raped on her wedding night in Season 5. Turner stands by the horrific moment.
“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,” Turner told the publication. “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.”
Turner said that men still don’t believe her when she says that nearly every women she’s met has experienced some form of harassment, “and that’s because we don’t [talk about] it enough — we shy away from it.”
“I think if ‘Game of Thrones’ came out today, we’d definitely put some trigger warnings on there,” Turner added. “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.”
Sansa Stark endured a lot of physical and emotional violence at the hands of her sadistic husband, Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon). The controversial Season 5 episode “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken” featured Ramsay sexually assaulting Sansa after their wedding as Sansa’s former childhood friend, Theon, was forced to watch. The scene prompted outrage as it was not a storyline Sansa had in the “Game of Thrones” books. Outraged viewers accused the show of going overboard when it came to depicting violence against women.
Tuner addressed the show’s female violence while at Comic-Con in 2015, saying: “The one thing that Sansa still is, despite what happened to her, is strong. She’s not to blame for that… Sansa, yes, has gone through a lot, but she’s developed some skills from Cersei and Margaery and others, and she’s still just as strong… she could have fought back [in the wedding night scene]. But she didn’t. She does her scheming in her mind rather than outwardly.”
“Thrones” producer Bryan Cogman told EW at the time that he stood by the wedding night assault scene, explaining: “This is ‘Game of Thrones.’ This isn’t a timid little girl walking into a wedding night with Joffrey. This is a hardened woman making a choice and she sees this as the way to get back her homeland.”
“We made the decision to not shy away from what would realistically would happen on that wedding night with these two characters, and the reality of the situation, and the reality of this particular world,” he later added.
Read Turner’s full interview on Flaunt magazine’s website.