Sophie Turner returns to screens as an ordinary office worker caught in a dangerous heist in Prime Video’s new series ‘Steal’, a role she found complex and compelling.
The actress, known for her role as Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones, plays Zara in the six-episode thriller. Zara is a low-level employee at a London pension fund investment company whose typical workday is violently upended. A gang of thieves bursts into her office, forcing Zara and her best friend and co-worker, Luke, played by Archie Madekwe, to help them execute a massive theft of pension funds.
The series premiered in full on Prime Video on January 21, 2026.
What Made The ‘Steal’ Script So Fascinating To Turner
In a recent interview, Sophie Turner explained the core idea that immediately drew her to the project. She described a meeting with director Sam Miller where they discussed the show’s central question.
“It was basically: What makes good people do bad things?” Turner said. “And I liked that. This show is also a commentary on the cost of living crisis, the wage gap, what it’s like growing up in an alcoholic, abusive living space.”
She clarified that these serious themes are woven into an exciting, dramatic story. “It’s all subtly played underneath the action and drama. It’s not too political. It’s really exciting. There’s a bit of escapism in there, but it also feels like it could really happen,” she added.
Archie Madekwe echoed this, noting the series looks at how circumstance can push people. “We see a lot of that — people feeling stuck, feeling that they have no other options and wanting to do better for themselves,” he said.
Playing A “Messy” And Complex Character
Turner has expressed a strong preference for layered roles over simpler ones. “Easy women are boring,” she stated plainly. She seeks out characters who undergo significant change.
“I want really nuanced, layered characters,” Turner said. “I want big character changes. I want to see a progression. To be a character who doesn’t know where she’s going, doesn’t know what she wants to be, feels stuck, feels stalled, feels underappreciated — that’s nice for us to see onscreen. I like seeing women at their rawest and most vulnerable. It’s quite liberating to play.”
For Turner, playing Zara was a cathartic experience. She filmed the series in 2024 shortly after moving back to England. She connected with the idea of a character who is allowed to fall apart, something she feels is often denied to public figures.
“We’re so often not allowed to go off the rails,” Turner reflected. “When [you’ve been] in the public eye since you were 13, you’re not allowed to f— up. And as a 13-year-old, you need to be able to f— up in order to be able to progress in any way in life… To play a character like Zara, it was like, ‘OK, I’m going give myself the opportunity to be on camera and pretend to do coke.’ It was quite liberating.”
The On-Screen Partnership With Archie Madekwe
The friendship between Zara and Luke is central to the series, and that connection began off-screen for the actors. Turner and Madekwe had not met before filming began. Their bond started by chance while Turner was on vacation.
“He said, ‘Are you in Capri? Someone just said that they saw you. I’m on this beach a two-minute walk away.’ So then we had a whole holiday together and we got to work already best friends,” Turner recalled.
This real-life friendship helped them through the demanding shoot. “We developed this very real friendship,” Madekwe said. “It meant that we came to set with a dynamic in place… We were able to be there for each other and be each other’s morale and that extended into the scenes as well.”
Turner added, “We totally fell in love with each other on this project, platonically.” Madekwe praised Turner’s professional demeanor on set, calling her “the dream No. 1 on the call sheet” for her commitment to the work and her ability to create a positive environment for the entire crew.
A Deliberate Shift In Career Choices After Game Of Thrones
Since her time on Game of Thrones ended, Turner has been selective about her roles, actively avoiding projects that remind her of the fantasy epic. She received many offers for period dramas but turned them down.
“I did not want to do any more period pieces after ‘Game of Thrones,’ mainly because of the temperature,” Turner joked. “You’re always outside and you’re always in a flimsy little cotton dress and there’s mud everywhere… It’s not as glamorous as it seems.”
More seriously, she felt a need to explore different kinds of characters and discover her own identity apart from Sansa Stark. “After Game of Thrones finished, I didn’t know what was up and what was down. I needed to discover who I was,” she said. She has since taken on roles like a jewel thief in the series Joan and now the chaotic Zara in Steal.
How Turner Builds Her Characters
To create the character of Zara, Turner engaged in an extensive process of building a backstory. She creates detailed histories for her roles that inform her performance but are not necessarily seen on screen.
“It’s nice to have little secrets about the character that the audience doesn’t know and the directors don’t know,” she explained. “It creates a few more layers and a bit more nuance.”
Her method involves keeping detailed notebooks. “I like to write their backstory, and then I do journals from their perspective — a journal from when they were 12, and then a journal entry from 25. I have all of it,” Turner said. She mentioned that Zara’s character is shaped by a difficult upbringing with an alcoholic mother, which feeds into her motivations throughout the series.
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Tomb Raider And New Confidence
Following Steal, Turner is deep into preparing for her next major role: playing Lara Croft in the upcoming Tomb Raider series for Prime Video, which is currently in production. She described this version of the iconic character as focused on capability rather than appearance.
“My Lara is not a sex bombshell. It’s about her and her story and what drives her,” Turner stated. “She’s so unashamedly capable. She is not a woman who hides her strengths at all.”
The intense physical training for the role has had a personal impact. As a mother of two, Turner said the training has changed her sense of security. “I now really feel like I could protect them… My instinct would be to deck him in the face,” she said, describing how she now mentally approaches potential threat scenarios. She called the training the most intense she has ever done, surpassing even her work on the X-Men films.
Steal is now available for streaming in its entirety on Prime Video.
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