As exciting and whirlwind as her romance was with Jonas Brothers singer and solo star Joe Jonas was, looking back on it now Sophie Turner can kind of sketch out what went wrong. In a new Harper’s Bazaar 2024 Women of the Year profile, the former Game of Thrones actress said her upcoming 2025 psychological thriller Trust — in which she plays an actress on the run after a high-profile internet scandal — “really mirrored my life from this past year.”
She said filming the movie was a very “cathartic” experience and a chance to “let out some serious anger, which was fun.” Not as fun was the end of her four-year marriage to Jonas, whom she married in 2019 in a Las Vegas wedding overseen by an Elvis impersonator that was livestreamed by Diplo.
The couple subsequently had two children together, daughters Willa and Delphine, before Jonas filed for divorce in Sept. 2023, saying that their marriage was “irretrievably broken” and requesting shared custody of their children. Asked what went wrong in the high-profile relationship that found the glamorous jet-setting couple lighting up red carpets around the world during their union?
“I’m going through a legal process right now where I can’t really say much, but it was incredibly sad. We had a beautiful relationship, and it was hard,” Turner said of the highs of the marriage, and the lows of its dissolution. One of the reported points of contention in their split was Turner’s desire for their girls to grow up in her native England, and now that she’s back in the U.K. she told the magazine that her life feels like it’s back on the rails.
“I’m so happy to be back. It felt as if my life was on pause until I returned to England,” she said. “I just never really feel like myself when I’m not in London, with my friends and family. I was away for so long – six years – and it was when my friends were getting engaged, and when I got pregnant. I went for dinner with someone the other day, and she said, ‘I never got to touch your belly.’ We didn’t have those key experiences with each other.”
Turner, 28, said she was homesick living in Los Angeles and Miami with Jonas, revealing that the first thing she would do in every city they lived in was “find a British shop and stock up on a month’s worth of chocolate,” comfort food that helped her feel settled, but still didn’t make up for the aspects of American society she found most troubling. “The gun violence, Roe v Wade being overturned… Everything just kind of piled on,” she said. “After the [May 2022] Uvalde [school] shooting, I knew it was time to get the f–k out of there.”
Now she’s got her own place in West London, though Turner said she’s currently staying with a friend while the girls are with Jonas in the U.S. because being home alone without her kids is “absolute agony” for her. Turner — who can be seen now in the ITV crime drama Joan — also revealed that before becoming a mother she was “very depressed and anxious,” and used to isolate herself a lot.
“Now, I think I live my life for them. I want them to see me having a social life and enjoying work and thriving in my career and relationships,” she said. “I want them to see a hard-working mum. I’ll come back and say, ‘This is why Mummy was away – it’s because she’s doing this for you, so Father Christmas can come with a big bundle of presents.’”
In September, a Florida judge declared Jonas and Turner officially divorced and single, approving a confidential, moderated agreement between the two that split their assets and detailed spousal support and custody of their children. In January, Turner dropped her “wrongful retention” suit when the ex’s reached a co-parenting agreement.