How Joe Jonas Saved Sophie Turner’s Life
It’s hard growing up in the spotlight. Just ask the numerous child stars who’ve developed a number of mental and other issues once reaching adulthood.
Sophie Turner has been in the public eye since 2011 when she began playing Sansa Stark on Game of Thrones. She has spent most of her formative years being scrutinized by everyone with a television and an internet connection. And because of it, she has struggled with her mental health.
What was it like growing up on ‘Game of Thrones’?
Getting older in front of the whole world can be hard on anyone mentally.
“Having your adolescence being displayed in public, that’s something I really wish hadn’t happened,” Turner said in a recent interview with The Sunday Times. “Being in the age of social media when that’s happening, I think I would be a much saner person if I hadn’t been documented from 13 — your most awkward, uncomfortable, unsure-of-yourself years.”
People’s rude comments about her weight caused her to have body image issues and become self-conscious.
“Suddenly, everyone’s metabolism slows down at 17, 18 and then that’s documented,” she continued. “My skin and everything. People commenting on it. I was too aware of my body at a young age. And it just kind of took over my mind, it was all I would think about. Calorie counting, everything. Oh, I’ll just eat nuts today.”
All of the comments on social media eventually got to be too much for the star.
“You see 10 great comments and you ignore them, but one negative comment and it just like, throws you off,” she said in an interview with Dr. Phil McGraw. “People used to write, ‘Damn, Sansa gained 10 lbs.,’ or ‘Sansa needs to lose 10 lbs.’ It was just a lot of weight comments. Or I would have spotty skin because I was a teenager and that’s normal, but I used to get a lot of comments about my skin and my weight and how I wasn’t a good actress.”
Her eating disorder became so severe that it interrupted her periods. She hadn’t had a period in over a year by the time she finally decided to seek therapy.
How Joe Jonas saved Turner’s life
Turner met singer Joe Jonas when she was 20 and says that the relationship saved her life.
“He was, like, ‘I can’t be with you until you love yourself, I can’t see you love me more than you love yourself.’ That was something, him doing that,” she told the Times. “I think he kind of saved my life, in a way.”
How did Turner and Jonas meet?
The two met in the most millennial way possible. Jonas slid into Turner’s DMs. Their friends had actually tried to set them up previously, but nothing clicked until one day he messaged her on Instagram.
“We were following each other on Instagram, and he direct-messaged me one fine day, out of the blue,” she told Harper’s Bazaar UK.
The couple got engaged in 2017 and were wed in a surprise ceremony in Las Vegas on May 1st of this year. The two still plan on having a wedding in Europe but needed to first marry in the U.S. for legal reasons.
