Game of Thrones’ Sophie Turner describes the show as her “sex education”

Actress Sophie Turner, who plays Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones, has confessed she learnt a lot about sex from being on the HBO series.

Turner has been a part of the show’s main cast since season one, taking on the role at the young age of 13. Six years later, the star has admitted the script provided her with her very own “sex education”.

Speaking to The Sunday Times, she recalled: “The first time I found out about oral sex was reading the Game of Thrones script.

“I was 13. I said, ‘Wow! People do that? That’s fascinating.’ I guess that was my sex education. Being on Game of Thrones.”

Turner also spoke about the controversial scene in 2015, which showed Sansa being raped by the villainous character Ramsey Bolton on their wedding night.

She 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.”

However, the actress continued to emphasise the importance of confronting difficult topics: “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?”

Game of Thrones returns to HBO and Sky Atlantic on 17 July.