Kit Harington had to keep his secret even from his Game of Thrones castmates

Entertainment Weekly is continuing its coverage of the secret life Kit Harington led between the end of Season 5 and the end of Season 6, Episode 2, “Home.” According to EW, showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss told Harington that Jon Snow would eventually be revived a mere two weeks after the rest of the cast received their scripts for season 5, in the summer of 2014. However, Harington wasn’t allowed to tell anyone, including his costars and the people on the crew, so for a year he had to convince everyone that he was leaving the show after Jon Snow’s death in “Mother’s Mercy.”

"At first I thought I would find it fun. This will be a fun game. But I had to lie to a lot of close friends and cast members and crew. The longer it went, the more I felt like I was betraying them. So I did end up letting people in, slowly."

According to Harington, Liam Cunningham (Davos Seaworth) never believed he wasn’t coming back, and told him to “F**k off from the start,” but Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark) bought it—she wrote Harington a sweet letter telling him how much she loved working with him.

EW says that, by the time the Season 6 scripts went out, the cast had “pretty much figured out” that Jon would be returning to the show. I just hope Sophie Turner didn’t feel too silly for writing that note.

Now I need to go back and watch all those interviews cast members before the season started, to see how they reacted when asked if Jon Snow was dead. My biggest problem with most of the interviewers was that no one would ask the real question: was Jon Snow going to be resurrected? Asking if he was dead gave the actors an easy out, every time.

Now that Jon’s alive, the next question is: what will he do, and how will he react toward those who murdered him? Tune in this Sunday to find out.