LONDON — Sophie Turner is serious about enjoying difficult, doubtlessly messy characters. The British actor is drawn to girls who’re pressured to show their very own price, though the parallels between them aren’t at all times deliberate. In “Steal,” a six-episode restricted collection on Prime Video that premieres in full on Wednesday, Turner embodies an undeniably chaotic finance employee named Zara.
“Simple girls are boring,” she says, talking from her publicist’s workplace in London earlier this month. She’s days away from kicking off filming on Prime Video’s forthcoming “Tomb Raider” collection, by which she performs video-game icon Lara Croft. The muscle groups she’s been constructing for the previous yr throughout prep are hidden beneath a unfastened sweater, however Turner, 29, carries herself with a way of confidence that means she’s as robust internally as she is on the surface.
“I need actually nuanced, layered characters,” she continues. “I need massive character modifications. I wish to see a development. To be a personality who doesn’t know the place she’s going, doesn’t know what she needs to be, feels caught, feels stalled, feels underappreciated — that’s good for us to see onscreen. I like seeing girls at their rawest and most weak. It’s fairly liberating to play.”
Once we meet Zara, a low-rung employee at Lochmill Capital in London, she’s hungover and scattered. Her workday takes a flip for the more serious when a bunch of thieves maintain up the high-rise workplace and power Zara and her co-worker Luke (Archie Madekwe) to assist them steal pension funds. She’s rapidly caught up in a fancy net of deception, by which she could also be complicit.
Enjoying a personality who goes off the rails was cathartic for Turner, who shot the collection in 2024 shortly after transferring again to England following her messy divorce from pop star Joe Jonas.
Sophie Turner as Zara in Prime Video’s “Steal.”
(Samuel Dore / Prime Video)
“We’re so typically not allowed to go off the rails,” she says. “When [you’ve been] within the public eye because you had been 13, you’re not allowed to f— up. And as a 13-year-old, you want to have the ability to f— up so as to have the ability to progress in any approach in life. And people errors you make ought to by no means be public. You have to be allowed to make them and have the room to make them.
“To play a personality like Zara, it was like, ‘OK, I’m going give myself the chance to be on digital camera and faux to do coke.’ It was fairly liberating to go, ‘Oh, my God, am I allowed to do that? OK, let’s present that uncooked facet,’” she provides.
It’s onerous to speak about “Steal” with out gifting away its many twists. The thriller side was a part of what initially captivated Turner, who met with director Sam Miller after studying the scripts. She remembers asking him what he needed to discover on the present.
“It was mainly: What makes good folks do dangerous issues?” she says. “And I favored that. This present can also be a commentary on the price of dwelling disaster, the wage hole, what it’s like rising up in an alcoholic, abusive dwelling house. There are such a lot of elements that contribute to Zara doing the issues she does and Luke doing the issues that he does. It’s a very attention-grabbing notion of: How far can we be pushed till we’re pressured to do one thing that we don’t actually wish to do?”
“Circumstance performs an enormous function into folks’s determination making,” Madekwe provides, talking afterward Zoom. “We see quite a lot of that — folks feeling caught, feeling that they haven’t any different choices and desirous to do higher for themselves. You’ll be able to have all the greatest intentions and do one thing out of real necessity, with out really excited about the ripple impact. A lot of the issues these characters do come out of impulse.”
Sophie Turner on the premise of “Steal”: “It was mainly: What makes good folks do dangerous issues?”
(Jennifer McCord / For The Instances)
Turner clarifies, not desirous to make the present sound too severe, “It’s all subtly performed beneath the motion and drama. It’s not too political. It’s actually thrilling. There’s a little bit of escapism in there, however it additionally feels prefer it may actually occur.”
A lot of “Steal” was shot on location in London. The Lochmill Capital inside was a set, however nearly every little thing else was shot in recognizable locales across the metropolis, generally late at evening. Turner is the one actor I’ve ever interviewed who has admitted to having fun with evening shoots.
“It was enjoyable,” she says. “I don’t know why different folks don’t prefer it. It’s like once you’re a child and also you go in for fogeys’ night and it’s nighttime in school and also you’re like, ‘I shouldn’t be right here!’ It feels a bit naughty.”
Turner and Madekwe hadn’t met previous to taking pictures. Earlier than the manufacturing began, Turner was on trip in Capri when she received a textual content from her co-star. “He stated, ‘Are you in Capri? Somebody simply stated that they noticed you. I’m on this seashore a two-minute stroll away.’ So then we had a complete vacation collectively and we set to work already greatest mates.”
“We developed this very actual friendship,” Madekwe says. “It meant that we got here to set with a dynamic in place. We actually wanted that as a result of we had been taking pictures within the lifeless of summer season in a boiling scorching studio and a few of these days had been notably lengthy. We had been in a position to be there for one another and be one another’s morale and that prolonged into the scenes as properly.”
Turner provides, “We completely fell in love with one another on this mission, platonically.”
Archie Madekwe as Luke and Sophie Turner as Zara in “Steal.” The actors grew to become shut mates earlier than the filming of the collection.
(Ludovic Robert / Prime)
On set, Madekwe was impressed each with Turner’s capability to maintain her feelings “simmering beneath the floor” and with the best way she approached her job. “She’s so deeply dedicated to the character and to the work, however I’ve additionally by no means been with somebody who creates such a contented working surroundings for your entire crew,” he says. “She says whats up to everybody. Remembers all people’s identify. She is the dream No. 1 on the decision sheet and she or he leads by instance and units the tone.”
Like with all of her characters, Turner created an expansive backstory for Zara, who’s trapped in a poisonous relationship together with her alcoholic mom. She will be able to nonetheless recount it two years later and it’s remarkably detailed, involving Zara’s faculty historical past and the psychological the explanation why her mother drinks a lot.
“It’s good to have little secrets and techniques in regards to the character that the viewers doesn’t know and the administrators don’t know,” Turner says. “It creates a number of extra layers and a bit extra nuance. I discover it actually useful. Anytime I’m doing a personality, I’ve this understanding of what makes them tick. What are their phobias? Have they got any irrational fears? It provides you a broader image of the character.”
Does she keep in mind any of Zara’s irrational fears? “I’d should verify my pocket book,” she says. “I’ve numerous notebooks from totally different characters. I like to jot down their backstory, after which I do journals from their perspective — a journal from after they had been 12, after which a journal entry from 25. I’ve all of it.”
The one one who doesn’t have a pocket book on Turner’s shelf is Sansa Stark, whom she performed on “Sport of Thrones” for eight seasons. “I want I’d completed one for Sansa,” she says. “However I used to be too younger to know that’s what I wanted to [do] for a personality.”
“It’s good to have little secrets and techniques in regards to the character that the viewers doesn’t know and the administrators don’t know,” Sophie Turner says. “It creates a number of extra layers and a bit extra nuance.”
(Jennifer McCord / For The Instances )
Sansa was Turner’s first onscreen function and her most pivotal. She was 13 when she was solid and spent her adolescence filming the collection. She’d been desirous to act for so long as she may keep in mind. “I feel my mother put me in courses once I was 3,” she says. “I caught the bug so onerous, so quick. After I was 11 — and I keep in mind this as a result of it’s a kind of recollections that’s etched in there — I stated to my mother, ‘I really want to interrupt into the trade as a toddler as a result of I feel it is going to be simpler to remain there.’ However I by no means had a recreation plan for it as a result of the ‘Sport of Thrones’ audition smacked me within the face.”
Though she beloved being a part of the present and performing, Turner was confronted with important public scrutiny. She shot scenes that had been notably mature for somebody her age, together with a memorably difficult rape scene. She’s acknowledged coping with despair and anxiousness since her late teenagers, and she or he’s brutally trustworthy about seeing a therapist. When the present led to 2019, Turner was prepared to maneuver on together with her profession. She’s averted comparable exhibits since.
“I received quite a lot of interval piece provides, however I didn’t wish to do any extra interval items after ‘Sport of Thrones,’ primarily due to the temperature,” she says. “You’re at all times outdoors and also you’re at all times in a flimsy little cotton gown and there’s mud in all places.”
She pauses, a twinkle in her eye. “OK,” she continues, “that is the rationale I don’t like doing them. You get mud on the underside of your gown and when it’s important to go and wee the mud slaps your bum once you pull the gown up. It’s not as glamorous because it appears.”
After “Sport of Thrones,” Turner performed Marvel superhero Jean Gray in “X-Males: Apocalypse” and “Darkish Phoenix,” real-life jewel thief Joan Hannington within the restricted collection “Joan” and an actor pressured to outlive a house invasion in final yr’s “Belief.” After wrapping “Steal” and an upcoming movie known as “The Dreadful,” Turner went deep into preparation for “Tomb Raider.” Her tackle the character isn’t “intercourse bombshell,” as she places it, and there will likely be no pointy boobs concerned.
“It’s about her and her story and what drives her, fairly than what so many individuals additionally love about her, which is how scorching she is within the video games and the flicks,” Turner says. “However I actually wish to present the opposite facet. She’s so unashamedly succesful. She isn’t a girl who hides her strengths in any respect.”
Sophie Turner on why she’s excited to play Lara Croft in “Tomb Raider” subsequent: “She’s so unashamedly succesful. She isn’t a girl who hides her strengths in any respect.”
(Jennifer McCord / For The Instances)
Coaching to play Lara has include an sudden upside. Turner, who shares two youngsters with Jonas, feels extra comfy strolling across the streets of London as a single mother. “I now actually really feel like I may shield them,” she says. “As a mum, I give you eventualities in my head and I’m like, ‘OK, if a person jumped out of right here what would I do?’ And it’s at all times like, ‘I simply decide the youngsters up and run. However now it’s modified. My intuition can be to deck him within the face.”
She provides, “I’ve by no means needed to prepare for something like this earlier than. In ‘X-Males’ we needed to be in fine condition, however my character was telekinetic so I didn’t must do a lot. I didn’t understand I may push my physique that far. I really feel like I’ve achieved one thing even earlier than we’ve began taking pictures.”
If it looks like Turner hasn’t been in a ton of initiatives since “Sport of Thrones,” it’s as a result of she’s been purposefully discerning. She’s additionally been targeted on elevating her children, who had been born in 2020 and 2022.
“I’m not saying sure to something,” she says. “After I had my children, I felt like I wanted to get my profession again on observe. After which I went via a really costly divorce. It’s simply now I really feel like I’m getting again to the place I wish to be when it comes to having the ability to decide and select what I actually wish to do. And that’s a pleasant place to be.”
“Steal” is conclusive in its ending, leaving Zara extra succesful than she was originally of the present. Turner says the high-octane emotional scenes helped her to get out the anger, unhappiness and frustration she was feeling on the time. “However I don’t know if enjoying characters looking for their approach on this planet essentially helps me discover my approach,” she says.
What has helped is remedy.
“I’m figuring it out,” Turner says. “I’m nonetheless discovering my approach, in a great way.”
