Sophie Turner was 14 when she began playing Sansa Stark, and she was 23 when the series finale aired. For nine formative years, she helped lead Game of Thrones, one of the most highly talked-about HBO shows. Now, she’s getting real about the “identity crisis” she went through after the fantasy series came to a close.

Now, it’s been seven years since Game of Thrones came to an end, and Sophie Turner has moved on to new projects. However, Sansa is still a big part of her career and life. It defined her teenage years and early twenties, so saying goodbye was understandably hard. Recalling what it was like to close out such a life-changing chapter, Turner told The Sydney Morning Herald:

I didn’t know who was Sansa and who was Sophie. And I was too young to read the books, so I kind of just developed her over time. I had a big identity crisis when I let her go; I didn’t really know who I was or what I was doing. It was a strange, hard time.

This all makes sense to me. It seems like Turner is saying that because she was too young to read the books, she developed Sansa on her own, and therefore, the line between herself and her character was a bit murky.

So, when it was time to say goodbye to Sansa and release Game of Thrones’ series finale, Turner wasn’t sure who she was without that character. I can’t say I blame her. For nearly a decade, her work on the fantasy series defined her life and career.

To that point, back when the final season of GOT was in the works, Peter Dinklage commented on how “bittersweet” it was to say goodbye. Also, while he didn’t name names, he noted that when one of the younger actors on the show had their series wrap, “everybody was a wreck.” He went on to explain that it was because it was like these young performers were “saying goodbye to their childhood.”

Of course, Turner, Maisie Williams and Isaac Hempstead Wright all literally grew up on that set. Meanwhile, for other actors like Kit Harington and Emilia Clarke, who were in their mid-twenties when the show started, GOT served as both some of their first projects and their major breakout roles. For a lot of this cast, this series was a game-changer, and for everyone involved, it took up a big chunk of their lives. Of course it’s hard to say goodbye to that.

For Turner specifically, growing up on that set helped shape both her character and herself, so figuring out who she was post-Thrones was a challenge. To that point, in a different interview, she noted that she had to “rebuild” her career after GOT, explaining that she “needed to discover who [she] was” after wrapping up the fantasy series.

However, she’s handled it all well, she went on to star in some great projects, and she is now playing Lara Croft in the upcoming Tomb Raider. Although she will always be Sansa Stark as well, and if you’d like to go back and watch Turner both grow up and give a great performance, you can stream Game of Thrones with an HBO Max subscription.

Riley Utley is the Weekend Editor at CinemaBlend. She has written for national publications as well as daily and alt-weekly newspapers in Spokane, Washington, Syracuse, New York and Charleston, South Carolina. She graduated with her master’s degree in arts journalism and communications from the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. Since joining the CB team she has covered numerous TV shows and movies -- including her personal favorite shows Ted Lasso and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. She also has followed and consistently written about everything from Taylor Swift to Fire Country, and she's enjoyed every second of it.