In an interview with British Vogue, “Game of Thrones” actor Sophie Turner said the 2022 mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, was one of the reasons she decided to move out of America.
“I couldn’t fathom being a mother of one of those children, knowing that this was something your country could fix, that they’d rather have rights to guns than give kids a right to life,” the British actor said in the profile published Wednesday.
In May 2022, an 18-year-old gunman entered Robb Elementary and killed 19 children and two teachers. Nearly 400 law enforcement officers responded that day, but they waited 77 minutes to confront and kill the shooter. Texas doesn’t have strong gun laws, according to Everytown Research, and U.S. lawmakers continue to struggle to pass any significant gun control measures, even after Uvalde, which was the deadliest shooting at a Texas public school.
A month later, Americans’ constitutional right to abortion was overturned, leaving it up to the states to decide whether a pregnant person can get an abortion. Now nearly half of the states have banned or severely restricted abortion.
“Meanwhile, women in the US are being stripped of their rights, left, right and centre. It all contributed to this feeling of I have to get out, I have to get out,” Turner told British Vogue.
Right before Turner and her ex-husband, American singer Joe Jonas, announced they were separating in late 2023, Turner moved back to her home in the U.K. Turner had previously told Elle magazine that she needed to move back to Britain for her mental health and to be near friends and family.
In the interview with British Vogue, Turner also opened up about her separation from Jonas as well as how she didn’t like being reduced to just Joe Jonas’ wife while they were together.
“It was kind of this plus-one feeling,” she said. “And that’s nothing to do with him ― in no way did he make me feel that ― it was just that the perception of us was as the groupies in the band.”
