Sophie Turner Says that Game of Thrones Was Her “Sexual Education”

One of the hardest things to learn as a child actor (if you’re a busy one) is life itself.  When you’re spending the majority of your time on set it gives you less time to experience the world and understand many of the things that are taught to us at a young age.  Therefore much of what is learned might be on set itself.  Such is the case for one Sophie Turner, the 21 year old actress who is popular for her role on Game of Thrones (as well as new star status in X-Men films).    Turner admitted that she effectively “grew up” on set and this is something all too common for child actors who don’t have a chance to have a “normal” education and experience school like most teens do.

In fact when it came to the topic of sexual education, Turner admits that much of what she know came from her experiences on the show.  According to the Sunday Times

“I’d be doing a read-through and we’d be talking about very graphic stuff. The first time I ever found out about oral sex was from reading the script. I was 13.  I was like … ‘Wow! People do that? That’s fascinating!’ I guess that was my sex education. Being on ‘Game of Thrones.’”

Also regarding the highly controversial sexual assault scene in season 5 Turner said:

“Sexual assault wasn’t something that had affected me or anybody I knew, so I was pretty blasé about the whole thing. 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.’ 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. 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?”

As much as we envy actors who get to star on our favorite shows, there are things that we take for granted that these actors struggle to learn.  “Real life” is an extremely important thing to learn which child actors don’t get nearly enough exposure to.