On Game of Thrones, Jon Snow was honorable to a fault. In Criminal on Netflix, Kit Harington inhabits a completely kind of character.
On Game of Thrones, Kit Harington played Jon Snow, a character who was forever loyal, steadfast and dependable. Jon always tried to do the right thing, even when it wasn’t clear what that was, and he tried his best to be just and kind to everyone.
But with Game of Thrones in the rearview mirror, Harington is trying out different sorts of roles, including playing a smug, bigoted real estate agent hotly denying he committed sexual assault in Netflix’s Crinimal, coming to Netflix this month.
The gimmick of Criminal is that each episode takes place entirely in two rooms: the room where the suspect of the week is being grilled by investigators and an adjoining observation room. Harington plays the suspect in the second episode of the second season. Katherine Kelly, who plays Detective Inspector Natalie Hobbs, thinks people will get a kick out of seeing Harington in a new context.
“One of the most exciting things about the show is you get to see some of the world’s greatest actors playing roles that you probably have never seen them play before,” Kelly told Metro. “For instance, Kit [Harington] – obviously he’s one of the most famous actors in the world, right, for playing a particular role. I actually saw him on stage, way before Game Of Thrones, in a play called Posh, by Laura Wade, and he was brilliant, so I know that he can absolutely play that type of role. He brings a lot of what I saw on stage in that play into his character of Alex. I think people will be really excited to see that.”
Rochenda Sandall, who plays Vanessa Warren, put is a little more bluntly: “Kit Harington getting to play, to put it impolitely, a real d**k, it was amazing because he’s so honourable as Jon Snow, and he’s been tied to that piece for so long. I could just see him really embracing [playing Alex] and enjoying it.”
Criminal season 2 drops on Netflix on September 16.
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