“I did feel—and still do—that Game Of Thrones shone a light on things that many people were like ‘Oh god, you can’t show that kind of thing’—and I understand it can be triggering—I totally understand that point of view,” the actor told Flaunt in a recent interview. “But I did feel we were actually doing a lot of justice to women and the fight women have had to fight for hundreds of thousands of years—the patriarchy, being treated as objects, and being constantly sexually assaulted—I don’t think there’s one woman I know who hasn’t had a form of that.”
Turner went on to explain that men tend not to believe this statistic when she shares it with them. “And that’s because we don’t [talk about] it enough—we shy away from it,” she continued. “I think if Game Of Thrones came out today, we’d definitely put some trigger warnings on there… But I’m really proud to have been a part of Game Of Thrones where they didn’t shy away from showing atrocities that happened to women back then. I feel proud to have been part of the conversation.”
Turner previously spoke out in 2017 about how the backlash to the scene “shocked” her and inspired her to get involved with the nonprofit Women For Women International, which supports female survivors of war and conflict. “My anger over the response then turned to excitement that the show had caused such a stir among the public and that a dialogue had been created; a dialogue that was very important,” Turner wrote in an op-ed for the Thomas Reuters Foundation at the time. “Although, I wondered why people feel so impassioned to speak out about a fictional rape when this happens all over the world every day? So unless we continually keep broadcasting people’s stories of sexual violence, then how else are people going to respond?”
It’s a mission Turner is still on, even though she said goodbye to her Game Of Thrones character over half a decade ago. “I do like to make things that people can walk away from and they feel able to change something about themselves or feel inspired to do something,” she explained to Flaunt. “I want to do more unusual stories—I want to do more A24-type projects where they’re super unique and very niche.”
