Kit Harington “Hates it” When People Take His Picture Without Permission
By Ani Bundel
Kit Harington is on the interview circuit again, ostensibly pushing his not-so-new movie MI-5. Despite the speculation, intrigue, large circular hints from HBO, and the big fat honking spoilers, Vulture was very polite and went along with the supposition that Jon Snow is dead and Kit Harington is no longer on Game of Thrones, asking him no questions about the upcoming season. This in and of itself is telling, since everyone else who died on the show isn’t exempt from being asked about the upcoming seasons, from Ian Beattie, who also died in the Season 5 finale, to Charles Dance, who has been dead a whole season. Even Sean Bean, who never made it to the end of the first season, is still asked about the show.
Vulture did want to know “what length is his famously contracted hair? How is his stubble?” However, it insisted the actor was not prepared to answer hair-related questions. Instead, it tied back the plot of MI-5, which is about how the government is always watching us, to the experience Kit Harington has had these last few months as stalkers and Game of Thrones enthusiasts instituted the Harington HairWatch. Harington admits that he already had opinions on the Big Brother culture even before this happened.
There’s a snooping culture in the U.K. which is very unhealthy. In London especially, we’re one of the most, if not the most, surveilled population in the world. I find that terrifying — governmental control of Internet records and phone records is wrong. Deeply wrong. I feel that quite strongly… One of the reasons I love being an actor is sometimes you get to … I don’t necessarily like making political statements, and actors really shouldn’t, but sometimes you get to do so through your work.
As to those personal snoopers:
Do I think people taking photos of you without your permission is rude? Of course I do. I deal with it a lot. There’s a lot of camera phones being pointed at me in not such a subtle manner. And a lot of my friends who are actors, and myself, we get angry about it. It’s incredibly rude behavior. It’s one thing to ask someone for a photo, and give them the chance to say yes or no, and hopefully they say yes. But to take photos of me, without permission, it is an invasion of privacy… you should be empathetic to how it feels to other people to be watched or photographed. If you wouldn’t like it yourself, then don’t do it to other people. Be more polite, generally. Because I can tell you, it’s very uncomfortable being photographed all the time without your permission.
As for how he feels about the pictures The Daily Mail got a hold of and ran? (By the way, don’t click on that link unless you want big fat honking spoilers.) Well, like asking about Game of Thrones, Vulture didn’t go into that either. But I’m guessing no one, least of all Harington, was pleased.