Kit Harington has been conspicuously absent from the interview circuit since the days immediately following the Game of Thrones Season 5 finale. After appearing in the pages of nearly every magazine and online entertainment site to insist his demise was the real deal, he didn’t do what most actors who have kicked the bucket on the show do: namely attempt to ride the continuing Game of Thrones press attention to their next project. (Jack Gleeson also didn’t follow that trend, but he was very open that once he was off the show as Joffrey, he was quitting acting for a while, and therefore didn’t need to peddle himself.) Sean Bean, for example, still does interviews about Game of Thrones, five years since Ned’s head’s been in a basket.
Harington has also been visibly absent at award shows following Season 5, which is surprising. These events offer a major opportunity to network with the right people who might be looking to cast your next role. (Pedro Pascal went to every last awards show for Season 4, for example, and found himself a role in Netflix’s Narcos.) They also offer the opportunity for red carpet photos, which helps keep you in the public eye. The fact that Season 5 swept the Emmys made Harington’s low profile even more conspicuous.
“Hmmm, anyone seen Kit Harington around?”
The lack of drawing public attention to himself these last eight months has been only one of the very many reasons that fans are convinced that Harington will return for Game of Thrones Season 6.
But now he’s broken his silence. In an interview with BBC Breakfast, Kit Harington, who is promoting his turn as the lead in Doctor Faustus on stage in London’s West End, speaks out a bit about his experience on the show. In trying to avoid the obvious questions, he brings up the long-lost pilot episode most fans have never seen. The pilot is, by all accounts, absolutely terrible. Benioff and Weiss admit openly they didn’t know what they were doing, and that the first time they sat people down to watch it, they were horrified to realize that their test screeners didn’t even get that Cersei and Jaime were siblings. Tamzin Merchant famously missed being on the biggest show in the world as her Daenerys was replaced by Emilia Clarke. As for Harington….
The pilot really didn’t work. No one’s ever seen it, it’s in some back room somewhere, and I’d like it to stay there!
Why? Well, it turns out Harington has more than just the badness of the pilot to be concerned about: “I had a horrible wig on.”
As for Game of Thrones Season 6, despite his best efforts, the question inevitably came up in the interview. Watch below.
KIT: All I can tell you is Jon Snow is dead. He died at the end of the last season.
BILL: But his spirit lives on?
KIT: Who knows? You’ll have to wait and see. It’s going to be a very exciting season so I’m led to believe.
So he’s been led to believe? Who told him? Last year, everyone who died do far insists they aren’t allowed to know anything once they are off the show. Perhaps he’s been reading our list of every Season 6 spoiler that we know? I mean, since he’s dead, it wouldn’t be that he was there, would it?