Sophie Turner's 'Game of Thrones' rise: 'The best drama class I could have hoped for'

Sansa Stark is nobody’s victim.

Just a year after many fans were outraged by the Game of Thrones character’s wedding-night rape, the latest in a litany of abuses, the young lady of Winterfell gained sweet vengeance at the end of last season, releasing her captured attacker’s hounds and watching them devour him.

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Sansa, who once dreamily envisioned life as a princess, is perhaps the HBO drama’s most-transformed character — and now a rising power, as Thrones opens its seventh season Sunday (9 ET/PT).

“She went from being the young, innocent girl who saw the world through rose-tinted glasses and transitioned to being a prisoner but also a listener, adapting under the watchful eye of her captors,” says actress Sophie Turner, 21, who was 13 and acting in a school theater group 100 miles from London when she was chosen to play Sansa in 2009.

“It’s only in the past couple of seasons that we’ve seen her become a leader in her own right and emerge as quite a powerful force in the game.”

Sansa is not part of the triumvirate — King in the North Jon Snow (Kit Harington), her half-brother; dragon queen Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke); and reigning Westeros monarch Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) — on a collision course for dominion over the Seven Kingdoms, but the grisly death of her abusive husband Ramsay Bolton may be more of a start than a conclusion.

Harington recalls how Sansa subtly relished Ramsay’s demise.

“That’s who Sansa is going to be in the future. She’s as brutal as any of them,” he says. “Before, she was a victim in many ways. Now, she is very much a protagonist, someone who’s driving the story.”

Jon wouldn’t be Winterfell's lord and Ramsay wouldn’t be dog food without Sansa’s earlier intercession at the Battle of the Bastards, when her shifty but accomplished ally Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish (Aidan Gillen) came through with the military forces needed for victory.

That triumph marked another major turn for the young woman, previously subjected to so much suffering at the hands of one-time fiancé King Joffrey; his mother, Cersei; the manipulative Littlefinger; and the murderous Bolton clan.

Turner says Sansa doesn’t want to rule Westeros. But after being ignored by male counterparts in earlier combat planning, despite her intimate knowledge of the Boltons, she appears to be channeling a different kind of queen — Aretha Franklin — in the battle’s aftermath.

“She believes she deserves a bit of respect for saving everyone’s life, which I think is reasonable,” Turner says, displaying a deft, dry wit. “She doesn’t necessarily feel stripped of the title she deserves, but she definitely feels underappreciated.”

Turner, by comparison, has no trouble getting respect in the entertainment industry.

The actress spoke by phone from Canada, where she's filming 2018's X-Men: Dark Phoenix, her second outing as super-powered Jean Grey. She has a lead role in an upcoming sci-fi film, Time Freak; and she moves far away from Sansa and Winterfell as a blond, tattooed Alabama wild child in Huntsville, an upcoming film co-starring Dylan McDermott. 

“Game of Thrones has been amazing. It’s been the biggest drama class I could have ever hoped for, but it’s also been an incredible platform. It’s got a huge amount of visibility,” she says.

Harington, 30, is impressed by Turner's development as a person and an actor. 

“It’s crazy going from having this 13-year-old girl that you feel protective over, who’s sweet and innocent and keeps running up to you and telling you not to smoke, and then watching (her) grow over the years into a fascinating, intelligent, incredibly funny and witty young woman,” he says.

Turner remembers being unfazed as a novice actor  joining an esteemed cast that included Headey, Sean Bean, Michelle Fairley and Peter Dinklage.

“I was probably just coming out of that phase, at 13, where dressing up and sword-fighting was really exciting. I was part of a theater company … and I probably played it a million times with friends on stage,” she says, although she had less familiarity with Thrones’ more adult storylines. “It was only the sex, probably, that kind of shocked me a little. I didn’t really know what to make of it. I didn’t know you could do half the stuff that they say in the script.”

The rewards of early success have come with some minor challenges.

“There are insecurities you have when you’re growing up, just normally, but then you need an Instagram account to promote your project and all of a sudden the little insecurities you have are being shouted at you by all your followers,” Turner says. (In a reflection of that public scrutiny, she declines comment, with a playful laugh, when asked about her relationship with singer Joe Jonas: “I’m happy in my personal life, yes.”)   

Having 20-year-old Maisie Williams (who plays Sansa’s younger sister, Arya) around, especially early on, helped. 

“She’s been my rock, and I think I’ve been hers. She’s kind of my sister, my best friend, my soulmate,” Turner says. Both recently got matching tattoos— 07/08/09 — reflecting the date they were hired.

Turner sees the sisters, who didn't get along as young girls, as two sides of the same coin, battling gender norms in a patriarchal society.

“They’re opposites in probably every way. Arya is very impulsive, quick to fight, incredibly brave and stands up in the face of fear-mongering. Sansa takes her time with things. She’ll fight with her mind and doesn’t show her cards too quickly,” she says.

Turner won’t say whether the pair, who have been separated since Season 1, will reunite, but she would love to see it happen, predicting “they’d work amazingly as a team.”

For now, Sansa will be dealing with the two most prominent men in her life, Jon and Littlefinger, who wants her beside him as he seeks his elusive goal: The Iron Throne. 

Sansa honed her political skills watching the scheming Littlefinger.

“He’s been taking Sansa under his wing and watching her grow into this formidable — and less readable — player," says Gillen. "They are equals now, almost. I think they both know what the other is up to.”

Sansa’s once-distant relationship with Jon has improved.  She saved him on the battlefield and alerted him to a looming threat with a foreboding update on the Stark family motto: “Winter is here.”

“She’s older and wiser, not as innocent and naïve," Turner says. "They’re finally working together.”

At the same time, Turner notes, Jon didn’t say anything about Sansa when he was proclaimed King in the North in the Season 6 finale, an omission noticed, if silently, by Littlefinger.

“You see (Littlefinger) giving Sansa almost an 'I-told-you-so' look. I think she knows he can get her to that place of recognition she doesn’t feel she’s getting,” Turner says. “He came through when she needed him at the Battle of the Bastards. He’s proven himself to her and she’s thinking, ‘Well, maybe we are a good team after all.’”

 Will there be conflict over Littlefinger's desire for the Iron Throne? That seat of power might end up a mangled mass of metal if the fight for the Seven Kingdoms is just an intramural skirmish before the war against the White Walkers.

“The power of storylines moving toward an intersection is something everybody’s been waiting for,” Gillen says. “The very first imagery of the first episode of Game of Thrones concerns the threat from beyond the wall.”

Whoever rises and falls during the seven-episode season, followed by six final episodes due in 2018, Turner isn’t betting against Sansa.

“She made it through Ramsay, Littlefinger, Cersei, Joffrey. I think she can make it through this.”