Game of Thrones' Sophie Turner: Sansa Hates Joffrey!

Game of Thrones' Sophie Turner: Sansa Hates Joffrey!

Sansa Stark has lost that loving feeling for King Joffrey Baratheon. The eldest Stark daughter was betrayed by her betrothed last season on Game of Thrones, when he had her father Ned publicly beheaded. In the second season, the formerly boy-crazy Sansa (Sophie Turner) has decidedly cooler feelings toward the king. "She hates him!" Turner tells TVGuide.com. "She's seeing Joffrey in a completely different light." Game of Thrones' Madden discusses Robb Stark's love life and patented "sex stare" Unfortunately, as the daughter of the late nobleman, Sansa is too valuable as a political-marriage prospect to be released from her engagement. She's been confined to King's Landing, awaiting the impending wedding. "She's on her own, she's kind of caged up with the people that killed her father. So she's very much a prisoner," Turner says. The gently bred teenager hasn't buckled, however, despite repeated physical and emotional abuse. On Sunday's episode (9/8c, HBO), the epic Battle of the Blackwater will take place between the forces of those loyal to Joffrey (Jack Gleeson) and those loyal to his uncle, Stannis Baratheon (Stephen Dillane). As the men wage war outside, Sansa is left inside to deal with another type of challenge. "She's at Maegor's Holdfast while the battle is going on," Turner says. "She's strong, and I think she's quite strong-willed, but she's also incredibly frightened. I can tell you that you'll see sides to Sansa that would seem very queen-like. She takes quite a leadership role." Check out the rest of the interview with Turner: How does Sansa cope, being all alone? Where is she getting her strength, and what is she doing to make it bearable? Sophie Turner: I think she gets strength from thinking how her mother and father would cope. She also thinks of her sister Arya because Arya is so strong, and she would usually fight back. We never really saw it last season, but we're seeing it now. There's that horrifying scene where Joffrey is pointing a crossbow at Sansa. What was that scene like? Was it tense to do? Turner: It was quite intense. But I really, really enjoyed it. Jack was so lovely, and Peter [Dinklage] was so lovely. Everyone was lovely on set. So it was kind of easy. But when the cameras start rolling, it has a very tense atmosphere about it. We have heard how completely opposite that Jack is from his character, Joffrey. Turner: Yes. He's one of the most lovely people I've ever met, and I can't stress it enough to the fans of the show because I'm scared people are going to come up to him and say horrible things to him. They shouldn't because he's lovely. What are Sansa's feelings towards Joffrey's mother Cersei (Lena Headey) now? Turner: It's quite a bizarre relationship because at first she kind of felt Cersei was a second mother until ... she realizes that the Baratheons and the Lannisters aren't all they seem to be. And now she really hates Cersei, but ... she can't help feeling that Cersei has been through this before, because she went through the exact same thing with King Robert. Although he wasn't as bad with Cersei as Joffrey is with Sansa. But they've got something in common, and they've got some sort of connection. There's also a little bit of a heart-to-heart that Cersei and Sansa had. Do you think that sort of changed how she felt about her? Turner: I think definitely that was kind of the turning point in their relationship because Sansa's always kind of loathed Cersei for what she's done, keeping her prisoner. And then you see kind of a bit of humanity in Cersei that we've never really seen before.Even though Sansa seems to sort of get that she has a role she's supposed to play, every now and then she shows bits of rebellion. Does she have a death wish?

Turner: It's arguable! [Laughs] No, I think that for a 13-year-old girl to be held prisoner by the people who killed her father - it's a very horrible situation to be in. She tries her best to fool the prince and fool everyone around her, but you can see in some of the scenes that she isn't hiding it perhaps as well as she was initially. Because she just can't really bear it any more.

There also seems to be sort of a complicated relationship between Sansa and The Hound (Rory McCann). Can you describe what's going on there?
Turner: Well, I think it kind of mirrors Sansa and Cersei in the way that The Hound has been a victim of bullying by his older brother. And that kind of mirrors Sansa's story line with Joffrey. And so he feels very protective of her, I think, and he doesn't want anything like what happened to him to happen to Sansa, because she's still very vulnerable in terms of physicality.

How then, does she regard Tyrion (Peter Dinklage)? He's one of those horrible Lannisters, but he did help her when Joffrey was abusing her.
Turner: Tyrion does care for Sansa although Sansa knows she has to be very, very wary. Her main focus is to stay alive, to survive to see her family again, and I don't think she's willing to trust anyone at this point except for her maid Shae (Sibel Kekilli). Which is quite ironic, because she's not actually who she says she is. She's Tyrion's whore.

In the first season, many fans of the series disliked Sansa because she was blind to Joffrey's manipulation and sided against her own family. Do you believe Sansa is more sympathetic this season?
Turner: Hopefully the responses will be a lot better this time, because she's not making the mistakes that she made last time. I don't think she's done anything wrong at the moment. She's just trying to survive - that's all she's doing. And so hopefully the fans will like her a bit more this season. I don't get recognized that often. But they've been fairly nice to me. They don't talk about my character. Because I was expecting a lot of "I hate you"s. But that never really came around. They're very polite.