In a candid podcast interview with Dr. Phil on April 16th, Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner spoke about her struggles with self-esteem issues and clinical depression while playing Sansa on the show.
Turner recalled that her mental health battle for “about five or six years” and says she still struggles to get out of bed and leave the house on occasion.
Turner’s been open about her struggles on several occasions and on social media in the past— although she’s doing much better these days with the help of therapy and medication.
Seeing the struggles and experiencing them herself, the actress hopes that her role as a troubled mutant in the newest X-Men franchise Dark Phoenix inspires people to talk about mental health more since it focuses more on Jean Grey’s ongoing battle to control her telepathic and telekinetic powers.
Turner told Harper’s Bazaar magazine: “She’s spiralling out of control and she can’t understand what’s happening to her. She has auditory and visual hallucinations, so we [she and the director Simon Kinberg] started to liken her mental state to schizophrenia. It was a way to ground the character and make her more relatable.”
