Kit Harington: Game of Thrones season 8 seemed “designed to break us”
It’s all falling into place. 2019 is here, we’ve gotten a glimpse of two worlds colliding in HBO’s teaser for the final season of Game of Thrones, and the cast and crew are beginning to come out of their long hibernation to talk about what it was like to film the final episodes.
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Or, in this case, GQ Australia has finally published an interview with Kit Harington (Jon Snow) he gave back in July, shortly before filming his final scene for the show ever, “a bit of green-screening.” This is at the tail end of filming on the most elaborate season of Thrones in its history, and Harington sounds tired. “The last season of Thrones, seemed to be designed to break us,” he said.
"Everyone was broken at the end. I don’t know if we were crying because we were sad it was ending or if we were crying because it was so fucking tiring. We were sleep deprived. It was like it was designed to make you think, Right, I’m fucking sick of this. I remember everyone walking around towards the end going, ‘I’ve had enough now. I love this, it’s been the best thing in my life, I’ll miss it one day – but I’m done.’"
When Game of Thrones came knocking, Harington was just 22 years old. He recalls that during his audition, he read dialogue for a scene that wasn’t set to happen until season 3, an exchange between Jon Snow and Ygritte (Rose Leslie, Harington’s real-life wife) that involved Jon convincing his lover not to go through with the wildlings’ plan to invade the North, all while concealing his plan to betray her, and conveying that he was in love with her.
Clearly, the Game of Thrones producers were planning for the long haul, but Harington says that, back in the early days of the show, he was often gloomy about its prospects. “After the first season I would say to people, ‘We definitely won’t get a second season,'” he said. “Then after the second season, I went, ‘Definitely not a third, no’. Everyone was, like, ‘Are you fucking kidding me, Kit? Of course we’re gonna get a third.'”
Harington, who described himself as “a right little shit” when he was younger, is cheerier these days, in part because the show introduced him to his wife. “It dawned on me, recently,” he said. “And I have no idea if we will, but say me and Rose do have children. They’ll know. They’ll be able to see the genesis of their parents getting together. Which is quite a wonderful thought, really. I thank the show for everything. But more than anything else, I thank it for introducing me to her.”
Indeed, moving past the show, Harington is looking forward to settling into a life away from the trappings of celebrity, which he got a whole heaping helping of during his time on Thrones. “Of course I want to be in a film that gets a run at the Oscars,” he said. “I’d love that. But am I seeking the red carpet-ness, and everything that goes around it? No. ’Cause I’ve done that. I’ve been to the SAG awards nine years in a row with Thrones. What’s more to experience about it?”
That said, Harington is still an actor, and he’s thought about how life may be different now that he’s shorn his iconic Jon Snow locks. Does Harington worry that people will forget about him?
"Look, I’m an actor, I’ve got an ego. To want to get up on stage and have people look at you, you’ve got an ego. So there’s a part of me that likes it, walking in somewhere and being recognized, and I’d be lying if I said otherwise… Will people still know who I am? How will that feel?"
All in all, Harington loved his time on Game of Thrones, but he’s ready to move on. “And that weight is off my shoulders. It’s done now. I can be proud of it. We’ve got eight seasons, and they can sit on a bookshelf at home ’til the end of time.”
The final season of Game of Thrones airs on HBO in April.
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