Since she was 13 years old, the British Sophie Turner has known well what fame is. She was barely a teenager when she became Sansa Stark in that immense success that was the series. Game of Thrones, and, since then, he has been a regular face in series, movies and red carpets. However, she had never faced a media hurricane of such caliber as the one that hit her last September, when the acrimonious separation of her husband and father of her two daughters, singer Joe, became public. Jonas. The process of custody of the girls, in the midst of a divorce, was not easy either. She, who has been defined as a party animal – in a negative way and not without a certain sexist tinge – by the sensational tabloids and portrayed as a kind of evil mother who had left her daughters behind her, has fought against all this in silence. Until now. The actress has become the protagonist of the new cover of the british edition of Vogueto whom she has given a long interview where she talks (as far as the legal process allows) about her daughters, the divorce, how she felt being one of the great Jonas family, how motherhood has affected her, her move to the United Kingdom and her mental health, among other issues, explaining how she has gone through periods of depression and an eating disorder that has led her to suffer from bulimia.
In these previous months, Turner has been through real hell, he admits. “They were the worst days of my life,” she says. When the divorce took place, she was filming Joan, a project in which she stars and in which she plays a jewel thief single mother. “I remember I was on set, I had a contract to be there for another two weeks, so I couldn’t leave. My daughters were in the United States and I couldn’t go see them because I had to finish Joan. And all those articles started coming out…,” she recalls. “It hurt me because I really torture myself for every decision I make as a mother. Being a mother, the guilt is totally real. I kept telling myself, ‘None of this is true. “You are a good mother and you have never been a party animal,” she recalls about the accusations that several tabloids made explaining that their lifestyles were very different, with Jonas preferring to be at home and Turner being more social, accompanied by some images of the interpreter in an end of filming party in Birmingham.
“It’s impressive how many people make up things and publish them based on a photo,” the actress reflects in Vogue. “A picture can tell a thousand words, but that’s not my case. I felt like I was watching a movie of my life that I hadn’t written, produced, or starred in. It was shocking. I am still in shock“, recognize. “There were days when he didn’t know if he would make it. He would call my lawyer and say, ‘I can’t do it. “I can’t,” he recalls now, eight months later. “And then, finally, after two weeks of being stuck, she reminded me that it was my daughters I was fighting for,” she says. “As soon as someone tells me, ‘Do it for your daughters,’ I do it. “I wouldn’t do it for myself, but I will find the strength for them.”
Until now, it had not been like that. She admits that she is not very good at “processing emotions”: “I lock them up and then they emerge years later in the form of depression or anxiety.” Now he has learned to manage himself better. “If something like this had happened to me 10 years ago I don’t think I would have had the same support. I just feel very lucky to be alive in a time where people are open-minded,” she acknowledges. “Thank God for Generation Z.”
The protagonist of X-Men: Dark Phoenix reveals that she never felt very integrated living in Los Angeles, having to drive long distances to see friends, nor in Miami, where she moved with Jonas shortly after having her daughter, living in a closed community with much more people. older: “I felt like a little bird trapped in a golden cage.” It is now, in her native United Kingdom, where she has regained her trust. She acknowledges that she felt very supported by her filming colleagues in Joan, also for his family and friends, whom he considers very close. “I think the reason I was on medication for so long is because I didn’t have those people with me. Now that I have returned home, I am truly the happiest person I have been in a long time,” she says, in what is quite a dig at the Jonas brothers, among whom she never felt like one more.
The fact that both she and Danielle Jonas, Kevin Jonas’s wife, and actress Priyanka Chopra, married to Nick Jonas, were always considered the Jonas’ companions was never comfortable for her, who has been building her own career for more than half a life. “There was a lot of attention on the three brothers and their wives. They always called us wives, and I hated it,” she admits now, after four years of marriage and three of dating. “It was kind of a ‘plus one’ feeling,” she adds. “And that has nothing to do with him, that in no way did he make me feel that, it was that the perception of us was as if we were the groupies of the band,” he reflects.
When she met the singer, in 2016, through an Instagram message that he sent her (she went to the appointment with her brother, thinking it was a lie), their romance was very fast. They got engaged in 2017 and married in 2019 in two weddings, one in Las Vegas and another in a large French castle. Her eldest daughter, Willa, three and a half years old, arrived almost unexpectedly in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, which helped the interpreter create a great bond with the little girl. The second, Delphine, almost two, was born in a more slow and consensual way. “Because my ex and I travel a lot,” she explains in the interview, “I wanted Willa to have a brother. She wanted them to have each other.” “They are very fun, very feminine girls and the rays of sunshine in my life.” At least for now, both have agreed to a temporary agreement whereby each has the girls for two weeks a month. But this has expired and they have to decide what they will finally do.
At no point does the actress talk about the reasons that led to their divorce. There are issues that, being her youngest daughter and fighting for custody, she cannot address. She admits to feeling “not at all happy” with how the separation has gone, “especially with regard to the girls,” but she also believes that they are doing the best they can and assures that her ex-partner “is a great father”: “And that’s all I can ask for.” But she hints that she expected more from Jonas, also since he is almost seven years older than her and has been immersed in a world of fame for decades. “It was surreal, like a fever dream,” she recalls now. “Since he was older than me, I felt that he was going to take care of me a lot, to the point that when I returned home I didn’t know how to do anything for myself.”
That return home was, in large part, for his daughters. Being British, she does not understand that catastrophes such as the Uvalde school shooting occur in the United States, which occurred in May 2022 and killed 19 children and 2 teachers. “I couldn’t conceive of being a mother to one of those children knowing that this is something your country can fix, that they would rather have the right to arms than give children the right to life,” she says. “Meanwhile, in the United States, women were being stripped of their rights, left and right. It all contributed to this feeling of: ‘I have to get out, I have to get out.’
Furthermore, both that move and the arrival of her daughters helped her mental health. “To be honest, having children was the best thing for my relationship with my body,” she now acknowledges the actress, who explains that her motherhood reminded her of “how incredible” the human body is and the importance of nourishing it correctly. “Being a young girl, and especially growing up in the spotlight, you judge yourself a lot.” Taking care of her mental health is key for her and for the well-being of her little ones, which is why she decides to take frequent breaks from social media. Since she settled in London after her divorce, she does not take medication. “Which is great and also surprising, because I thought I was going to need it, maybe now more than ever,” she reflects. “I’m starting over, rediscovering what I like to do, who I like to be with.”
But before returning to the United Kingdom, the actress had to remain in the United States for a while longer, until she resolved the legal issue with her two daughters. She decided to settle in New York, but she didn’t know where to go. Then, she called someone she had met years before, about whom they had spoken well, but with whom she had not been able to maintain a great relationship because he was her ex-partner, now also her ex-partner: Taylor Swift. The actress asked the singer if she knew anyone who could rent her an apartment. And Swift did not hesitate to offer him his, free. “Taylor has been an absolute hero to me this year,” says Turner, who has now begun to join the composer’s circle of friends. “I have never been more grateful to anyone than her, because she took my daughters and me in and provided us with a home and a safe space,” she says. “She really has a heart of gold.”
