Kit Harington (Jon Snow) may be preparing to film Game of Thrones season 8 — the final season of the show — but that’s not stopping him from talking with The Guardian about seasons 1-7, among other things.
First, Harington gave his account of the much-discussed, never-seen original Game of Thrones pilot filmed for HBO, recalling that it “made a lot of mistakes. It didn’t look right, didn’t feel right, had nothing different about it.”
Apparently, Harington wore a wig for the pilot, and didn’t have a beard. The pilot was so bad, in fact, that showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss are able to use it to keep him in line. “They say, if I ever piss them off too much, they’ll release it on YouTube. Every now and then, they send me a screengrab, just as a threat.”
Man, that pilot better show up as a Blu-ray extra someday.
But after the proper pilot was shot, the show hit the ground running. “Maybe the most special year was the first,” Harington said, reminiscing. “We weren’t being recognised in the street, we didn’t know what we were doing, we were having a great time.”
Fast forward to now, and things are very different. Game of Thrones is a worldwide hit, and like it or not, the cast members have achieved a measure of celebrity, a word Harington can’t say without using air quotes. “It makes me snappy and it makes me uncomfortable,” he said of fame, “and I turn into a grumpy person.” He’s learned to manage it, of course, and always tries to be polite to people who request a selfie, but Harington doesn’t sound like the kind of guy who enjoys being fawned over by the masses. “Like, being in Spain and there being a crowd of 500, maybe 600 fans camped outside the hotel every day, and you have to get through them,” he remembered. “It feels like being Bieber or something.” Not like Ed Sheeran?
Harington believes that his private life is his private life, and that extends to his time with his fiancé Rose Leslie (Ygritte). He’s pretty firm about not taking photos alongside her on request from fans in public, since that “makes our relationship feel like… puppets. Like we’re a walking show.”
All this scrutiny may be part of the reason he feels Thrones is ending at the right time. “I wouldn’t have wanted to go on for another year, but if it had finished last year, it wouldn’t have felt long enough,” he said. “I’m glad I’ve experienced it, but that’s what I mean about it being eight years, then it’s done. You couldn’t go on for much longer. It’s a bit incessant.”
For better or worse, Game of Thrones will end with season 8, which is being filmed now — Harington has already said he cried when he read the ending.
That doesn’t mean he’s giving it away, though. When The Guardian asked him how Jon will feel when and if he finds out that Daenerys is actually his aunt, he got cheeky.
I really hope that he just nods slowly and goes, ‘Damned right.’ Something really horribly inappropriate, and you find out Jon’s had a really sick mind the whole time. That’s the way I’d love to play it. I’ll try it for one take, anyway.
That’s another take that better show up on a Blu-ray release someday.
Discussion the Jon-Dany sex scene from “The Dragon and the Wolf” itself, Harington says filming it was “really weird,” particularly in light of how he and actress Emilia Clarke are good friends.
Usually, you’d turn up and you’d know the actor, but you’re not best mates. The main thing was trying not to laugh. It was like, OK, if we laugh, we’ll never get this scene done, so we’ve got to do minimal takes, then we can crack up about it afterwards.
You can read The Guardian’s full interview with Kit Harington here, where he goes into the production of his new show, Gunpowder, how he’d like to raise his children, and the bad poetry he wrote as a teenager.
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