The first thing you notice about Kit Harington is the hair. Or, these days, the relative absence of it. On “Game of Thrones,” the show that brought him global fame as good-hearted action hero Jon Snow, Harington’s locks furl out behind him like a military banner, providing glamorous evidence of Snow’s lack of vanity. (He’s too consumed by duty, after all, to get a haircut.) They’re the most compelling curls on the small screen since “Felicity” — which makes it all the more surprising that Harington’s now sporting short, slicked-back hair.
It’s in service of his first gig since “Thrones” wrapped shooting, as thwarted screenwriter Austin in Sam Shepard’s American theater standard “True West,” which played London’s West End from Dec. 4 to Feb. 23. But to Harington, the cut is less professional obligation than opportunity to begin the process of leaving behind Jon Snow. “For any other job I’ve had up until now, there’s a contractual element over me that I have to return to ‘Thrones’ with a similar look,” he says over lunch in his home in London before an evening performance. “I can’t tell you the amount of conversations I’ve had with agents about whether my hair’s going to grow back in time.”
It was a style, and an identity, that could feel at times constricting. Shooting what quickly came to be the biggest show in the world throughout his 20s left him at the precipice of 30 (he’s 32 now) wondering what was left to accomplish. “A huge part of my 20s are me with that look,” he says. “My wedding pictures [with former co-star and now-wife Rose Leslie] are me with that look. For a long time toward the end of ‘Thrones,’ I felt like I wanted to be a new person but I was stuck in this shape.” On the last day of shooting, Harington says, “I took off the costume, and it felt like my skin was being peeled away. I was very emotional. It felt like someone was shedding me of something.”
“Thrones” is the most Emmy-winning prime-time series and HBO’s most watched show ever, one whose international broadcasts have made Jon Snow an icon of rectitude the world over. And it’s made Harington — whose on-screen relationship with Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys Targaryen was last season’s surprise twist — into among the most speculated-about stars on Earth, as fans wait for the show’s April 14 return to see if Jon will die (again), claim the crown, or something in between.
Read Full Article
In Variety‘s March 19 cover story, Kit Harington opens up about the final season of “Game of Thrones” and growing into adulthood as part of the biggest show on television. In a conversation in London in December, Harington opened up about the similarities between the series’ politics and our own.
“I think it’s always been about two things for me,” says Harington. “About dysfunctional families — or families in general, always where the best drama is — and the everlasting idea that people who seek power are very often the last people who should have it. Unfortunately, we’re leaving ‘Thrones’ with a Joffrey as the President of the United States of America.” (Joffrey, the mad boy-king who is killed in the fourth season, has drawn frequent comparisons to Donald Trump.)
“I’m deeply sad of the state of the world as ‘Thrones’ ends. Because if it was prophetic, you’d hope that people would have watched ‘Thrones’ and tried to avoid some of the situations these characters find themselves in, and I feel like we are living in a more ‘Thrones’-like world.”
Harington also addressed the degree to which “Thrones” could be controversial, raising questions over time about, for instance, its depiction of female characters and the gauntlet of violence and assault certain of them were put through.
“I think it’s an amazing fantasy, because it deals with incredibly difficult and varied, very human characters. It has incredibly complex female and male characters in it. It was controversial, very controversial at times, but it asks questions of its audience and it asks questions of its viewership,” he says. “And so in that way it did what dramas should do, and it raised the idea of what fantasy could be. That could seem less important than other things, but it’s always been sneered upon, the fantasy genre, as being less important. But I think it’s an amazing genre and a genre with endless scope.” That scope includes, perhaps, a depiction of leadership with endless real-world resonances. [Source]
Shadow and Light
In the decade since Kit Harington was cast as Jon Snow in HBO’s Game of Thrones, he’s had to do almost everything. Everything, that is, except smile.
“I have played possibly the unfunniest character ever to have graced television,” he says.
So it’s fitting that as he says it, sitting in his London home, he’s laughing. He’s happy because he’s mid-run in a Sam Shepard play, True West, where he gets to wear his hair short and shave off that beard. He’s happy because his wife of nearly a year now, Rose Leslie, is upstairs rehearsing for her role in CBS All Access’s The Good Fight.
And he’s happy because the whole world is about to see the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones. It debuts April 14, and he can’t wait.
“I think it will be strong,” he says over a cup of tea, wearing a flat cap and jeans. “But you don’t want to mess it up on the very last outing.”
Harington is realistic about possible reactions. “I haven’t watched a single series that has a following like Thrones does where everyone is satisfied with the ending,” he says. “I don’t think that it’ll be any different with this. I think it will divide opinion.”
He’s read all the scripts, of course, making him one of the hundred or so people in the world who know exactly what will happen. He hasn’t told anyone — “not even Rose,” whom he met on the series (she played Ygritte, with whom his character had a brief, ill-fated fling).
“It’s not because I don’t trust people; it’s because they don’t want to know. I wouldn’t want to spoil it for them. There’s a part of me, in my head, that thinks they might have completely changed the ending anyway. Maybe they’ll put in something that we never saw. I don’t know. So we’ll see, but no, I haven’t told anyone.”
Read Full Article
Kit Harington will host Saturday Night Live for the first time.
The NBC sketch comedy series announced in a tweet Wednesday the 32-year-old British actor will host its April 6 episode.
The new episode will feature a performance from singer Sara Bareilles. Harington is the second Game of Thrones actor to host SNL, following Peter Dinklage’s appearance on the show in 2016.
Harington’s episode airs just over a week before Game of Thrones returns to HBO for its eighth and final season. The actor, who plays Jon Snow, said on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert last week he cried after reading the show’s finale.
“I was very shocked and surprised at certain events unfolding. And then I blubbed my eyes out. I cried,” he said. [Source]
