Perched on a tiny wooded island humming with African rainforest birds, Gorilla Kingdom is one of the main attractions at London Zoo. On this unseasonably mild Tuesday morning in late February, it’s a hive of activity: The lowland western primates who live here have two adorable newborns in their midst. “Look, there she is, with her little one!” says Sophie Turner, pointing toward Effie, the proud mama with her yet-to-be named two week old.
The actor had initially proposed a walk on Primrose Hill, but happily obliged when I suggested the nearby zoo—because who could resist the allure of baby gorillas? When she lived in New York, Turner, 28, would take her daughters, Willa, almost four, and Delphine, two in July, to the Central Park Zoo, and this morning she’s come from Willa’s new West London nursery school in an oversized camel-colored Maison Margiela coat. “The one coat I brought with me from America,” says Turner, who moved from Miami back to the UK last year. “If you can believe it, I only packed one suitcase.”
Her long blond hair tucked casually into her collar, Turner could easily be mistaken for a stylish Swedish au pair on her gap year. She reads aloud in her best thespian voice: “ ‘Effie is our most playful and cheeky female. She was born in 1993 at Copenhagen Zoo, and is well-known in the Zoo for her huge appetite.’ ” This attracts the attention of a nerdy but charming zookeeper, who proceeds to share the particulars of Effie’s birthing story: This baby was born wrapped in its umbilical cord and is lucky to be feeding normally. “Do you see how she’s dangling her baby by one arm? That’s actually not the best way to handle their newborns,” says the zookeeper. “They’re supposed to be wrapped around the body.” A crowd has begun to gather. “So you mean to say she’s a mother of four and she still hasn’t learnt how to carry her baby correctly?” asks a voice in a mock-accusatory tone. Turner looks at me, eyebrows raised. Are we mom-shaming animals now?
But it is, in fact, Turner who has been subjected to mom-shaming—of the most egregious kind. Following news last September that her husband Joe Jonas had filed for divorce after four years of marriage, rumors proliferated in the tabloids and online that she’d been somehow shirking her maternal responsibilities. It was the bad-mother trope, old as time, and it spread wide when images of Turner at a wrap party in Birmingham for Joan—the six-part drama coming to The CW network later this year, inspired by the true story of Joan Hannington, Britain’s most notorious jewel thief—began to circulate. “Sophie Turner Partied ‘Without a Care in the World,’ ” read one headline. Meanwhile, her pop-idol husband was portrayed as the doting dad, captured dutifully tending to his two daughters.
“I mean, those were the worst few days of my life,” says Turner with a sharp intake of breath, the memory still fresh. We’ve moved to a quiet corner in the zoo’s canteen, a vast light-filled space that’s mercifully empty now that the breakfast rush is over. “It hurt because I really do completely torture myself over every move I make as a mother—mum guilt is so real! I just kept having to say to myself, ‘None of this is true. You are a good mum and you’ve never been a partier.’ ”
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