Emilia Clarke on Kit Harington sightings, Game of Thrones’ eight-season hardline

CAUTION: SPOILERS FOR SEASON 6

It’s been a couple weeks since Emilia Clarke attended The Wrap’s 7th Annual Power Women’s Breakfast, but there are a couple interesting quotes we didn’t catch on the first go-round. Clarke, ever the trend-setter, actually sounded off on two topics many of her costars, not to mention the production staff, have avoided: the pre-season sightings of Kit Harington, and HBO’s announcement that the show will run for at least eight seasons. Check her out in this video interview from Entertainment Tonight.

Let’s start with her comments on Game of Thrones’ mysterious eighth season. A couple months ago, HBO president Michael Lombardo said that the show would run for at least eight years, although he unsurprisingly implied that he’d be happy making even more. Now we have Clarke clarifying the timeframe:

"Yeah, it’s gonna be no more than eight. So I think that we will have…maybe seven’ll get split into two, or maybe it’ll just be straight to eight."

Sorry, Mr. Lombardo—at least so far as Clarke is concerned, eight is it.

Networks have been known to split the final season of their prestige series into two before—see The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men. Game of Thrones definitely qualifies as a prestige show, so I can see this happening. Assuming it proceeds as per usual, the splitting method would give the producers at few more episodes to work with, say 75 instead of 70.

Then again, if I were Lombardo, I would be pushing for a full eighth season, with its 10-episode payload. That might be best for the show, too, seeing how much material the producers are bringing to the table in Season 6.

Next: Kit Harington (again, beware SPOILERS).

It’s been something of an open secret that Jon Snow, despite his murder at the end of Season 5, will be returning for Season 6 ever since on-set photos of Kit Harington in full costume emerged. A few cast members have weighed in on the Is-Jon-Snow-Dead question since then (Maisie Williams memorably stuck to her “yes-he-is” stance, despite photographic evidence to the contrary), but I think Clarke is the first one to mention the leaks. Here’s what she said about Harington’s appearance on set:

"I think that he loves us, I think that he misses us, and I think that we like to mess with those people who are snooping around our set, trying to get information that they don’t really want to know."

Okay, so she’s being pretty jokey, but tackling the leaks head-on is fairly bold. I also love the suggestion that HBO has been trolling us this whole time, and that the leaked pics were somehow set up to make us think that Jon is back, even though he’s actually dead. I’m pretty certain that’s not the case, but I would probably develop a weird kind of respect for the network if it actually pulled that off.

Next: Game of Thrones casting two more Northern lords for Season 6