Kit Harington Discusses His Take on Jon Snow Versus George R.R. Martin’s
By Ani Bundel
By now, we’ve all heard about how difficult last year was for Kit Harington, when he had to pretend that Jon Snow was dead and gone while filming his most intense season so far. But per a new interview with Vogue Italia, it seems the previous year has focused Harington on what he’ll do when the show ends. For one thing, it seems to have influenced his current decision during the off-season to take the lead role in Doctor Faustus, on the London stage, rather than again attempting to chase superstardom on screen.
"I made some so-called opportunistic choices for my career in the past. They turned out to be mistakes, I really regretted them, and I will not do it again… Faustus was the best choice I could have made between the various options that have been presented to me. An instinctive choice, like all the ones I plan to make in the future."
As Vogue Italia notes, the litany of onscreen roles he could be talking about is vast. But Harington seems to be really happy with the challenge of doing live theater, even if it’s also overwhelming him at the moment. He’s also focusing on his future in other ways. Since big screen leading man status has so far eluded him, he’s going to focus on where the real money is: production. He’s apparently secured the rights to two potential projects with his best friend, and together they are working on writing scripts.
One of them “will focus on the Gunpowder Plot, the famous conspiracy of 1605 when a group of English Catholics planned to blow up King James I along with his entire government at the official ceremony of the opening of Parliament in order to stop the persecution of their fellow Catholics. It’s an event that is commemorated every year in England, yet which surprisingly has never been adequately translated into a film.” The other “is taken from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. The story is set between Paris and London during the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror, but the relevance is, again, absolutely contemporary.”
Both of these sound like projects that would readily be picked up by the BBC, especially if Harington is attached to star. He’s aware he’s lucked out on the small screen. He’s lucked out in other ways, too—as many outlets are reporting, Harington also opened up about falling in love with Rose Leslie (Ygritte), his now ex-costar from the show.
"The three weeks in Iceland when we were shooting the second season. Because the country is beautiful, because the Northern Lights are magical, and because it was there that I fell in love… If you’re already attracted to someone, and then they play your love interest in the show, it’s becomes very easy to fall in love…"
As for the future of Game of Thrones, since the show has now passed the books, Vogue asks if his performance might affect the Jon Snow we see on the page going forward. Harington dismisses that out of hand.
"I honestly don’t think so. The idea that he has of Snow is entirely [George R.R. Martin’s] own, and doesn’t necessarily coincide with mine."
It’s interesting that Harington thinks his conception of Jon Snow is different from Martin’s. We’ll have to see if his choices on screen diverge from the books once The Winds of Winter finally arrives.