Kit Harington is bound and determined to make us believe that he’s not coming back for Season 6 of Game of Thrones. First he told BBC Breakfast that he’d only “heard” that Season 6 would be “very exciting.” Now he’s telling Digital Spy that his character is not only dead, but he hasn’t personally filmed for the show “in a while.”
In the interview, which may have been meant to focus on Harington’s upcoming turn in Doctor Faustus but which somehow gets off track, Harington was blunt.
People didn’t want me to die, but he’s dead. So there you go, everyone has to get used to it.
He insists that his involvement in Season 6 will be minimal, suggesting that if he was seen on set, it was mainly to film a funeral.
I haven’t done Thrones in a while. I had quite a lot of time off last year. I’ve been taking it easy. And relaxing. When I realised I was doing this, I had a few months to prepare for it, and something like this takes some working through before even getting into the rehearsal room.
SPOILER X-ING
Previously, Harington was seen on set during filming of a major Season 6 battle scene. Filming on that sequence wrapped in October, after the production had been shooting it for longer than it had shot any other scene in the history of the show.
It’s been over two months since filming wrapped on that scene. Assuming it really was the last thing Harington filmed, I suppose that qualifies as “quite a while.” And his refusal to do any press during the filming period, or even to show up for award shows, counts as “rest.” He’s probably not technically lying in this interview, but to twist a famous phrase from another series, “An actor never lies, but the truth he tells you isn’t the one you think you hear.”