Game Of Thrones is known for dividing fans with its brutality and the horrible things it puts its major characters through, but this week’s episode hit a nerve with many viewers, thanks to a scene involving Sophie Turner‘s character Sansa Stark.
(Warning: The scene in question concerns a sexual assault, which is discussed by those involved below).
In the final scene of episode six, Sansa, recently married off to the tyrannical Ramsay Bolton, is raped on her wedding night while Theon Greyjoy, who grew up with her, is forced to witness.
The act is not shown, but viewers see shots of the characters’ faces and reactions, and many claim that the beloved HBO series has gone too far this time, noting that this storyline between Sansa and Ramsay did not occur in the books.
This show is consistently over-the-top with sexual violence and it’s just gross. #GoT
— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) May 18, 2015
Guardian columnist Jessica Valenti called the scene “gross”, while feminist pop culture website The Mary Sue say that they will no longer be promoting or recapping the show.
In the midst of all this, Entertainment Weekly ran a lengthy interview with Thrones star Sophie Turner, conducted last year, in which she speaks at length about the soon-to-be infamous scene.
When asked about her reaction when she first received the script, Turner said she felt “so bad” for Sansa because of how things play out, but “excited” because of the “messed-up relationship” she would get to play.
As for filming the scene in question, Turner said:
“When I read that scene, I kinda loved it. I love the way Ramsay had Theon watching. It was all so messed up. It’s also so daunting for me to do it. I’ve been making [producer Bryan Cogman] feel so bad for writing that scene: “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me!” But I secretly loved it.”
Entertainment Weekly also spoke to Bryan Cogman, the producer and writer in question, and asked about this week’s scene:
“This is Game of Thrones,” he said soberly. “This isn’t a timid little girl walking into a wedding night with Joffrey. This is a hardened woman making a choice and she sees this as the way to get back her homeland. Sansa has a wedding night in the sense she never thought she would with one of the monsters of the show. It’s pretty intense and awful and the character will have to deal with it.”
Thrones faced a similar backlash last year, when it depicted a sex scene between twins Cersei and Jaime Lannister that many interpreted as rape.
UPDATE: Author George R.R. Martin has responded to the scene in question in a post on his blog.
He said:
There have been differences between the novels and the television show since the first episode of season one. And for just as long, I have been talking about the butterfly effect. Small changes lead to larger changes lead to huge changes. HBO is more than forty hours into the impossible and demanding task of adapting my lengthy (extremely) and complex (exceedingly) novels, with their layers of plots and subplots, their twists and contradictions and unreliable narrators, viewpoint shifts and ambiguities, and a cast of characters in the hundreds.
There has seldom been any TV series as faithful to its source material, by and large (if you doubt that, talk to the Harry Dresden fans, or readers of the Sookie Stackhouse novels, or the fans of the original WALKING DEAD comic books)… but the longer the show goes on, the bigger the butterflies become. And now we have reached the point where the beat of butterfly wings is stirring up storms, like the one presently engulfing my email.
Prose and television have different strengths, different weaknesses, different requirements.
David and Dan and Bryan and HBO are trying to make the best television series that they can.
And over here I am trying to write the best novels that I can.
