Sophie Turner Visualized Joffrey as Justin Bieber to Get Through Game of Thrones’ Early Seasons
Ahead of the highly anticipated premiere of the final season of Game of Thrones, Rolling Stone released its latest cover Tuesday, featuring two of the show’s most amusing cast members, Sophie Turner and Maisie Williams. And as you may have guessed from the fact that their previous joint interviews have seen the pair open up about their nightly sleepovers while filming—during which they smoke weed, watch “stupid videos,” and sit in the bath—the cover story does not disappoint.
Seeing as the pair is currently in the final throes of being sworn to HBO secrecy, they once again got to talking about their relationship, which Turner has previously described as “the purest form of true, true friendship.” This time around, Williams, who’s already confirmed that she’ll be a bridesmaid in Turner’s upcoming wedding with Joe Jonas, described how their friendship has now escalated to the point that they’re “a nightmare to work with” on set. “Anytime we tried to be serious about anything, it’s just the hardest thing in the world,” she said. “I think they really regretted putting us in scenes together. It was difficult.”
But nothing, it seems, is more difficult for Turner than stopping herself from spoiling the series’s end (for more than the two people she’s already confided in, anyway). Wisely, then, she chose to stick to talking about the show’s past—specifically the second and third seasons, which brought her character, Sansa Stark, to unfortunately close proximity with Joffrey Baratheon, the unusually cruel (even by Game of Thrones standards) boy king who met his fate in a chalice of poisoned wine in the infamous purple wedding in season four.
Before his untimely death at his wedding to Margaery Tyrell (Natalie Dormer), though, Joffrey was initially supposed to wed Sansa, who couldn’t have been more thrilled—at first, anyway. “She sees the world through rose-tinted glasses at the very beginning,” Turner said of Sansa, adding, “She is completely oblivious to who the royal family are.” (In Joffrey’s case, that would be someone who promises Sansa’s father mercy, only to then behead him and make her look at his head on a spike.)
As for how Sansa, let alone Turner, could believably conceive of life as Joffrey’s wife as being akin to that of a princess in a fairytale? The showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss came up with a surprisingly effective solution, making use of the fact that once upon a time Turner was a “Belieber, with a whole wall in my bedroom dedicated to him”—and that Joffrey’s mop of dirty blond hair bears a marked resemblance to quite a few of Justin Bieber’s noted hairstyles.
Left: Justin Bieber. Right: Jack Gleeson as Joffrey Baratheon in *Game of Thrones.*
“It’s like any Justin Bieber fan—they don’t realize Justin has his darkness about him,” Turner explained of Sansa’s rose-tinted view of the hated Joffrey. “David and [D.B] always told me, ‘Look at Joffrey as if he’s Justin Bieber and imagine that life,’” she recalled.
Clearly, it worked, even teaching Turner a new technique in the process: “That’s the trick—how to get Sophie to act!”
A Complete Visual History of Justin Bieber’s Hair
And I was like baby, baby, baby, oh…
Aside from minor changes in its swoop, Bieber stayed notably consistent with his look between 2008 and 2010.
For his appearance at the 2011 Video Music Awards, Bieber offered a long-awaited glimpse at his forehead, and accessorized with glasses and Selena Gomez.
A sneak peek at Bieber’s future scruffiness.
By 2012, Bieber seemed to have learned how to maintain his original locks: by simply slicking them back into a bouffant.
The kickoff of Bieber’s Believe tour in South Africa brought his bouffant to the international level.
Bieber’s cheery mug shot, taken shortly after he was charged with drunk driving, resisting arrest, and driving without a valid license, featured a magnificent bouffant—perhaps because he’d just spent the night racing.
Fully embracing his roast on Comedy Central, Bieber matched his hair to his monkey’s. (To be clear, this is not OG Mally, Bieber’s pet monkey, who was infamously confiscated by the German authorities, and who is still a resident of a German zoo—and still having trouble communicating with other monkeys.)
Posing with Nash Grier, Bieber later captioned this image simply “#Ponytails.”
Behold: a bleached-blond Bieber.
By the next month, though, he was back to his dirty-blond bouffant.
Who knows what’s hiding under this beanie? The possibilities are endless.
Bieber started off the new year with a bang—i.e., a man bun.
By the next month, he’d already moved on to bleached blond, as he showcased at the Saint Laurent show.
Naturally, his Purpose World Tour merited his third transformation in as many months. Lest it get in his way, he slicked it back into a bun on the tour’s opening night in Seattle.
Yes, those are dreadlocks, and yes, Bieber wore them out in public—here at the iHeartRadio Music Awards, though regrettably on other occasions as well.
By the next month, the dreads were fully gone, though that didn’t stop Bieber from making a statement while on his trip to Monaco. It was during this month that he also got a teeny face tattoo.
A little over a year later, Bieber shifted his attention to his facial hair.
The next year, his regrown hair didn’t exactly help him at the NBA All-Star Celebrity Game.
We’re still waiting with bated breath to find out if or when Bieber will deliver on this promise.
Look at those luscious locks go!
Alas, they weren’t that luscious for that long: Just two days later, reportedly at the behest of Hailey Baldwin, Bieber got a haircut—and a very on-trend one at that.
The evidence of the haircut, though, was already gone by the next month.
While in Michigan that September—a whirlwind month for Bieber’s hair—he returned to the forehead-less days of his youth.
Yes, that bump under his hood is no doubt a bun or a ponytail, pulled up high on his head, Hailey Baldwin–style.
Less than a week later, Bieber took care of the bump, using his Instagram Story to share the news of his buzz cut, which quickly earned him the nickname Buzztin. It also put his tiny face tat of a cross more prominently on display—an act of faith perhaps as prominent as his and Hailey’s commitment to waiting until marriage to have sex.
Save for the presence of Hailey and quite a few more tattoos, you’d be forgiven for thinking this photo dates several years back. In May 2019—yet another banner year of hair changes for Bieber—he threw things back to his original sleek, neatly combed, and naturally colored mop.
Periods of scruff soon followed, but Bieber once again managed to clean things up for his (second) wedding to Hailey in the following months.
It’s no surprise that Bieber kicked off the new year in a pair of Drew House pajamas, but his peroxide pixie was definitely an unexpected touch.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to Hailey. Even she (reportedly) “can’t stand” Bieber’s mustache, which unfortunately made a comeback. (Bieber even put it at the center of his “Intentions” art.) Hailey has yet to publicly condemn it, but according to People‘s mysterious source, that might be for the best: “The more people want him to shave it off, the more he wants to keep it. It’s staying for now. It’s making him feel like a rebel and he likes it!” Thankfully, Hailey has previously prevailed in getting him to shave it off.
