You can learn a lot watching “Game of Thrones.” You can learn about power’s infallible corruption, geography, and family dynamics. Or you learn about inverting inherently patriarchal social structures, medieval battle, or badass dragons. If you’re Sophie Turner, who plays Sansa Stark on the show, “Game of Thrones” can also teach you about sex.
Turner recently sat down for a wide-ranging interview with the Times’ magazine, revealing how she first came to learn about “sex stuff” thanks to GoT.
“The first time I found out about oral sex was reading the Game of Thrones script,” she told the Times’ Magazine. “I was 13. I said, ‘Wow! People do that? That’s fascinating.’ I guess that was my sex education. Being on ‘Game of Thrones’.”
While Turner is 21 now, she was only 12 when she first auditioned for the show and 15 years old when it first aired. In other words, Turner didn’t learn of the “birds and the bees,” but instead, “the dragons and the direwolves.” That was a bad joke, but I won’t apologize for it.
Turner also touched on the controversy that sprouted from a scene where her character was sexually assaulted. Criticism at the time revolved around the necessity of depicting such an act and if the show had crossed a line.
“Sexual assault wasn’t something that had affected me or anybody I knew, so I was pretty blasé about the whole thing,” she said. “Naively so. And then I shot the scene, and in the aftermath there was this huge uproar that we would depict something like that on television. My first response was like, maybe we shouldn’t have put that on screen at all.”
It taught the actress more about the issue and how it affected others. Instead she saw it as an opportunity to engage in conversation surrounding sexual assault and how we can help those who had suffered from it.
“The more we talk about sexual assault the better, and screw the people who are saying we shouldn’t be putting this on TV and screw the people who are saying they’re going to boycott the show because of it,” she told the Times. “This sort of thing used to happen and it continues to happen now, and if we treat it as such a taboo and precious subject, then how are people going to have the strength to come out and feel comfortable saying that this has happened to them?”
“Game of Thrones” premieres its seventh season July 16.
