Kit Harington was given a code name on set to keep Jon Snow’s role in Season 6 quiet

This Friday, Entertainment Weekly will release a new issue featuring a massive exploration into how the Game of Thrones production kept Jon Snow’s presence in Season 6 a secret. (Well, how it tried to keep it a secret.) It looks like EW will release details from that cover story throughout the week. Today, it reveals a new tidbit: to keep chatter to a minimum, the name “Jon Snow” didn’t appear on scripts, scene breakdowns, and call sheets for Season 6. The name didn’t even appear on prop or wardrobe materials. Instead, the character was always referred to as “LC,” for “Lord Commander.”

The ban went even further. “No one was allowed to say ‘Jon Snow’ on set, ever,” Harington said. “[E]veryone had to refer to me as ‘LC.’” (This didn’t apply to on-camera dialogue, of course, although it would be pretty funny if everyone starts calling Jon Snow “LC” when they see he’s alive next week.)

The lengths HBO went to to keep Jon’s presence a secret are even more impressive when you consider that, according to EW, “Kit Harington spent more days working on Thrones last year of than any other actor.” As Harington says in the video above, this is shaping up to the biggest season for Jon Snow yet, and it was preceded by a nearly-yearlong campaign to convince the world that he wouldn’t be in it at all. And keep in mind that Jon Snow was a corpse for the first two episodes of Season 6—he had no dialogue but a couple of ragged breaths at the end of “Home.” He must have a huge presence in the remaining eight episodes to make up for that.

We’ll bring you more info about LC and his role in Season 6 as it breaks.