Sophie Turner has word of warning for new Harry Potter child stars
Game of Thrones actress Sophie Turner has opened up on her struggles with social media, and why the new Harry Potter stars should avoid it altogether.
Sophie Turner wants the new Harry Potter child stars to stay away from social media.
The 29-year-old actress was just 14 when she filmed the first season of Game of Thrones, and she has been open about how she struggled with being in the spotlight as a teenager, and she has a word of warning for Dominic McLaughlin (Harry Potter), Alastair Stout (Ron Weasley) and Arabella Stanton (Hermione Granger) as they prepare to star in HBO's upcoming revival series.
She told Flaunt magazine: “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].
“'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.’”
Sophie had "a couple of years" without the social media bombardment when she first joined Game of Thrones.
She said: "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.
"It had such a profound impact on my mental health, like more than I could tell you. It almost destroyed me on numerous occasions.”
The actress suffered from anxiety and depression, as well as an eating disorder, as a result of the intense criticism and trolling online.
She noted that therapy "saved her life", and added: “One of the most important things to me in my life is talking about mental health: it’s vital.”
There was also an added intensity of the explicit and emotional scenes she was filming on the fantasy series, which included sexual assault storylines.
However, she argued: “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.
"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.”
