I find you really fascinating.
I want to know everything about you.
I'm really excited
to be here.
Yeah.
Why are you excited?
'Cause I'm a huge fan of your show.
Do you watch the show?
Yeah, everyday.
Yeah.
Joe will tell you.
Like when I'm doing my makeup,
when I wake up in the morning,
basically anytime I have spare I watch your show.
Are you like a mental health advocate?
Do you like that kind of stuff?
I do.
Since I was really young
we've had a whole mental health thing in my family.
What I like about your show is how you don't
sugar coat anything and you do it for the benefit
of the person that you're talking to.
You say that it's been an issue in your family,
was it like in your immediate family
or is this a generational thing?
No, it's my immediate family and myself as well.
I've suffered with depression
for about five or six years now.
So what's been your biggest challenge?
The biggest challenge is just for me getting out of bed
and getting out of the house.
You're 22, right?
Yeah.
I really don't think I had any issues with it
up until I was around 17,
and then it all of a sudden just kind of hit me.
(laughing)
Is there anything that caused it that you can think of?
My friends were all going to University,
and I was working, but I was still living
at my parents house, and so I felt very alone.
But now you're 17.
So you're four years on Game of Thrones.
Yeah.
Before you start getting depressed.
It only started to kind of go downhill
I think when I started to hit puberty,
and I was gaining weight.
And then there was the social media scrutiny and everything.
That was when it kind of hit me.
Did social media cause you to get depressed?
I think it definitely was a bit of a catalyst.
You see 10 great comments and you ignore them,
but one negative comment and it just like throws you off.
What would people say that bothered you?
The character that I play on my show is called Sansa,
and people used to right like,
"Oh damn, Sansa gained 10 pounds,"
or "Sansa needs to lose 10 pounds."
Really?
Yeah.
It was just a lot of weight comments.
Or I would have like spotty skin 'cause I was a teenager,
and that's normal, and I used to get a lot of comments
about my skin and my weight and how I wasn't a good actress.
And that bothered you.
Yeah.
And what would you say to yourself about that.
I would just believe it.
I would just say, "Yeah, I am spotty.
"I am fat.
"I am a bad actress."
And I just believed it.
So you would go to work the next day,
how would that affect you
when you went to do your scenes the next day?
Well I get them to tighten my corset a lot.
(laughing)
Make it tighter.
Make it tighter.
You got a foot in your back pulling.
Yeah, pulling.
I just got very very self-conscious.
I would be concerned about angles.
I'd be concerned about my face.
I have a big nose.
And so I would be like I don't know how to angle myself,
and it would just affect me creatively.
And I couldn't be true to the character
'cause I was so worried about Sophie.
And when you say depressed how did that express for you?
I had no motivation to do anything, or go out,
or even with my best friends I wouldn't want to see them.
I have a friend, Maisie, who is on the show with me.
She's just a year younger than me.
And she and I were growing up together
She was my best friend,
and so she was the only one I really told about all of it.
And when there were breaks would you stay inside,
stay in your room, stay in bed?
Oh yeah, yeah.
I would.
Maisie and I used to do it together.
We were I think being friends with each other
was quite destructive 'cause we were going
through the same thing.
And so we used to get home from set,
go to a little supermarket across the road
and just buy food and go back to our room
and just eat it in bed.
We never socialized for a couple of years.
Really?
Yeah.
We didn't socialize with anyone, but ourselves.
Yeah.
And it never occurred to you that 99% of the girls
in the world would love to be you.
I count myself as very lucky for that,
but I don't think I viewed myself
as worthy of anything that I was doing.
How do you do in your relationship.
Good, I think.
(laughing)
I think we're good.
What do you think, Joe?
Comfortable around you.
Yeah.
I won't be judged by him.
He's seen the worst.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You've seen the worst, and it was horrible.
Wasn't it, Joe?
(mumbles)
Yeah.
(laughing)
When someone tells you they love everyday
it makes you really think about why that is,
and I think it makes you love yourself a bit more.
So yeah, I love myself.
Someone like you that is an absolute icon
to your generation that is transparent
about mental health issues can save thousands of lives
in America this year.
That is absolutely what I hope to be like,
to just speak about it and be transparent about it.
That's the pay off that I would like is for people
to not feel so all alone and feel encouraged
to talk to someone about it.
Think about how many girls 8th or 9th grade
parents go in their room
and find that they've hung themselves in the closet
because they've been bullied on social media.
Yeah.
And think about how many girls won't do that
because of what you've said.
How many parents will open that door
and their girl will be sitting on their bed
instead of hanging in their closet
because of what you said?
Yeah.
(laughing)
That would be nice.
Yeah.
That would be the truth.
When we post this up we're going to put
the number for suicide hotline.
Yeah.
I'll get you the statistics of the baseline number
of calls they have before this is the posted
and the number of calls they have after it's posted.
That would be amazing.
I predict it will go up at least 200%
and never come back to baseline.
That's how powerful what you're doing can be.
That's what I call creating meaning to suffering.
I mean if that happened, my God,
I would just talk about it all the time.
(laughing)
Well, I'm serious.
That's powerful.
