New ‘Harry Potter’ Child Actors Should Stay Off Social Media and Keep Living at Home, Warns Sophie Turner: Being Online ‘Almost Destroyed Me’ as a Teen Star

Sophie Turner recently told Flaunt magazine that she is worried about the child actors who are headlining HBO’s upcoming “Harry Potter” series, which is now in production and targeting a 2027 premiere date. The cast includes a handful of relative newcomers who are going to be playing Harry (Dominic McLaughlin), Hermione (Arabella Stanton) and Ron (Alastair Stout) over the next near-decade as each season of the show adapts one of the seven “Harry Potter” books.

“I think social media was just really becoming a big thing after I started on ‘Game of Thrones,’ so I got a couple of years of peace and quiet and then I had to adjust. It had such a profound impact on my mental health, like more than I could tell you. It almost destroyed me on numerous occasions.” said Turner, who was only 13 years old when she debuted as Sansa Stark on “Game of Thrones.”

“I look at the kids who are about to be in the new ‘Harry Potter’ and I just want to give them a hug and say, ‘Look, it’s going to be okay but don’t go anywhere near ,’” Turner added. “‘Stay friends with your home friends, keep living at home with your family, make sure your parents are your chaperones’ — it’s so important to have that grounding adjacent to the big, crazy stuff that you do.”

HBO’s search for “Harry Potter” stars included 32,000 children auditions for the lead roles following an open casting call. The young cast also includes Lox Pratt (Draco Malfoy), Alessia Leoni (Parvati Patil), Leo Earley (Seamus Finnigan), Rory Wilmot (Neville Longbottom) and Amos Kitson (Dudley Dursley), among others.

The BBC reported in July that Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden, the production home for HBO’s “Harry Potter” series, built a temporary school so the young actors can keep up with their studies amid filming.

Per the BBC, Three Rivers District Council is permitting the studio to “use a series of portable buildings as a school facility for the next decade. The proposed classrooms have been designed to be used by up to 600 pupils during peak periods, when large crowd scenes are shot, but will typically serve about 150 students. It will operate on weekdays between 5:30am and 8:30pm so young actors can fit in their actual studies between night shoots, reshoots and location filming.”

The “Harry Potter” series will debut on HBO and HBO Max in 2027.