Winter is Coming
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Kit Harington's "darkest period" came after Jon Snow's death on Game of Thrones

Kit Harington opens up about his mental health struggles while making Game of Thrones; things got particularly bad after Jon Snow died and was brought back to life. "The focus on you is f—–g terrifying."

By Dan Selcke

Kit Harington as Jon Snow – Photo: Helen Sloan/HBO
Kit Harington as Jon Snow – Photo: Helen Sloan/HBO /
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Think back to June of 2015: the season 5 finale of Game of Thrones aired, ending with Jon Snow — good, honorable, handsome boy Jon Snow — getting knifed over and over by his fellow men of the Night's Watch, an execution for what they perceived as poor leadership. The TV-watching world freaked the f**k out. Was Jon Snow really dead? Was he coming back? You could not get away from these questions for a whole year.

By this point, Game of Thrones had killed off enough major characters — including Ned, Robb and Catelyn Stark — that it was plausible to think that Jon might really be gone for good. Then season 6 came along in 2016, and the red witch Melisandre brought him back to life. This storyline and the craze it inspired ratcheted Game of Thrones up yet another rung of the popularity ladder, but apparently it was hard on Kit Harington, who played Jon Snow for the length of the series.

"My darkest period was when the show seemed to become so much about Jon when he died and came back," Harington said on The Hidden 20% podcast. "I didn't like the focus of the whole show coming onto Jon. When you become the cliffhanger of a TV show and a TV show probably at the height of its power, the focus on you is f—–g terrifying."

Game of Thrones was always an ensemble show, but it's true that the focus narrowed towards the end to be on characters like Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen in particular. Harington has been open about how this level of fame messed with his mental health, talking about how he went to rehab multiple times after the end of the show; during one of those visits, he was diagnosed with ADHD.

Harington is sober now, and raising his two children with wife Rose Leslie, whom he met on the set of Game of Thrones; she played the wildling woman Ygritte.

dark. Next. majors. Don't expect to learn who's replacing Jonathan Majors as Kang anytime soon

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