'I got to let out my inner mess': Sophie Turner and Archie Madekwe's new thriller Steal is more than it seems

EXCLUSIVE -- Sophie Turner was 13 when she was cast in her breakout role as Sansa Stark on Game of Thrones and Archie Madekwe wasn't much older when he made his theatre debut on London's West End.

Both have been acting ever since, starring in everything from big-name franchises like X-Men (Turner) to unexpected cultural hits like Emerald Fennell's Saltburn (Madekwe).

All of which is to say neither has ever worked an office job.

It made their time on the set of Steal, Prime Video's new high-octane series about an office heist in corporate London, surprisingly eye-opening.

"I always look into people's offices and see the way they've set up their desks," Madekwe, 30, told Nine.com.au.

"I always find it so interesting. It's not something that I can relate to. We have such a nomadic life and we don't have desks or offices."

He and Turner, 29, were enthralled by the personal details Steal's production designer team worked into each cubicle in the high-rise office building of fictional pension fund investment company Lochmill Capital to make it feel lived in.

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But if Madekwe had to pick up a corporate job tomorrow, the first thing on his desk would be a letter of resignation.

"I don't think I'm cut out for it," he laughed.

Turner felt the same, which should come as no surprise given her history.

She left school after joining the cast of Game of Thrones and has focused almost solely on acting ever since, a career she now juggles with motherhood (Turner shares two young daughters with singer ex-husband Joe Jonas).

There have been perks, of course – red carpet premieres, shooting in exotic locations, her name in lights – but becoming a woman in the public eye also had a significant impact on Turner's mental health and emotional wellbeing.

It's an experience that helped shape Zara, her character in Steal.

Zara faces intense scrutiny after she Madekwe's character Luke are forced to execute the demands of a gang of violent thieves who burst into their workplace to steal billions of dollars of ordinary people's pensions.

"I definitely understand feeling like every move you make is being watched and you cannot f--k up at any point," Turner told Nine.com.au.

"I actually think I brought quite a lot of myself to Zara. As actors, and people in the public eye, you get used to putting on a front.

"It's like the duck paddling furiously underwater and [looking] very smooth on top. That's how I feel all the time. So with Zara, I got to let out my inner mess."

While some actors would shy away from that inner mess, Turner leaned into it.

"It was really fun, actually," she said.

Madekwe explored a different kind of chaos in Steal; that of the British class system.

It's a can of worms he's cracked open before in projects like Saltburn (2023), in which he played an upper-class Oxford student, and the BBC adaptation of Les Misérables, in which he played a young rebel fighting against the 19th century French monarchy.

(OK, the latter's more about a centuries-old French class system, but you get the point.)

Without giving too much away, Steal raises questions about the wealth gap, classism, and what some people are willing to do for money in a society that too often rewards the rich and punishes the poor.

They're questions South London-born and raised Madekwe finds fascinating and inescapable.

"Being English, it's just the way that we grow up. We we live in a country that's built around class," he said.

"I don't come from a particularly wealthy family. I come from quite a working-class family, my dad's a plumber.

"Yet I now am in an industry where you mix with all sorts of people, and the disparity in my real life and the way I've grown up, and then the life you're all of a sudden thrust into – I just find the the contradiction between the two fascinating."

Turner agreed that the British class system is inescapable and that discussions about its complex inner workings deserve to be hashed out on the big and small screen.

"Since I was about five years old, I've known what class I was in," she said.

"It's nice to do a project that comments on it and brings light to it and the dire circumstances we find ourselves in today."

But it wasn't all inner mess and conversations around class consciousness on set.

Despite Steal depicting what is probably the worst week in both Turner and Madekwe's characters' lives, the pair had a shocking amount of fun filming it.

From the tears and tension of the opening heist scene, to Madekwe's Luke running for his life (several times, actually), and Turner's Zara trying to disentangle herself from the messy threads of the heist and subsequent police investigation, Steal goes all out.

Which meant both actors got to all-out too, especially while filming the heist.

Most of the cast – Turner and Madekwe included – hadn't seen the actors playing the thieves in their uncanny prosthetic disguises before the director called action, so their horrified reactions were about as real as you could get.

"It was a really exciting thing to be a part of, and to shoot it with with that level of surprise," Madekwe said.

"We then had to reshoot it, obviously," he laughed, "but that that first moment was exciting."

Steal premieres on Prime Video on Wednesday, January 21.

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Title: 'I got to let out my inner mess': Sophie Turner and Archie Madekwe's new thriller Steal is more than it seems
Sourced From: celebrity.nine.com.au/tv/sophie-turner-archie-madekwe-steal-prime-video-exclusive-interview/6afc43e7-78ff-44ad-b3d8-50ac9a324bd1
Published Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2026 00:01:00 GMT