HBOKit Harington as Jon Snow in HBO's Game of Thrones.MAGHERAMORNE, IRELAND – Kit Harington is anxious. Oddly, considering the show’s penchant for relieving central characters of their heads, the 27-year-old British actor’s concern is not for the safety of his Game of Thrones character, the kind-hearted bastard Jon Snow, nor for his brothers in the order of The Night’s Watch — the Seven Kingdom’s miscreant defense against wildling humans and supernatural ice zombies. Rather, Harington’s unease stems from a worrisome mental lapse that has put both his safety and the day’s tight production schedule in grave jeopardy: He’s left his glasses in his hotel room. “I’m doing a sword fight,” Harington explains between worried cigarette puffs (an act jarring enough to break any Game of Thrones fan’s suspended disbelief), “and I’m completely blind.”
It’s an unseasonably sunny mid-October day in Northern Ireland, and Harington, in full Night’s Watch regalia, is in the middle of shooting the fourth of 10 episodes that comprise Game of Thrones’ fourth season. In the show, as in A Song of Ice and Fire, the George R.R. Martin book series it’s based on, the military outpost of Castle Black lies along The Wall — a gargantuan ice barrier built at the northern peak of civilized society. On Earth, however, The Watch’s HQ is situated in a disused quarry about an hour outside of Belfast — where the majority of the Game of Thrones is filmed and where, presently, Harington’s corrective lenses are situated.
HBOEmilia Clarke in Game of Thrones.
Harington spent little time on the Castle Black set over the past year as his character perused his own Bond-like covert mission beyond The Wall — losing his virginity, his heart and ultimately nearly his life to a fiery wildling named Ygritte. Between seasons, the budding star spent his off time in Toronto shooting Pompeii, his first leading film role. The stay coincided with Game of Thrones‘ most disturbing, blood-churning and infamous moment to date: The Red Wedding.
“I was alone in Toronto, on my own,” he recalls of taking in the butchering of his television brother and step-mother. “It was a weird feeling. I was upset because [actors] Michelle [Fairley] and Richard [Madden] were going, but at the end I literally jumped up and wept for joy because I personally thought they nailed it.”
“It was a mixed bag.”
With Snow’s fourth-season return to Castle Black, Harington admits to feeling what he refers to as “a weird sort of déjà vu.”
“I’m wearing the training gear and it’s very similar to doing the training yard fight we did in Season 1,” he says.
Similar, but not the same. “I hated the wigs. Now it’s pure Harington hair — I never knew it would be curly,” he smiles. “And this is my first beard, too. I didn’t know I could grow one.” This isn’t the first time Harrington and the rest of his castmates have felt déjà vu. After a disastrous initial run, HBO asked showrunners David Benioff and D.B Weiss to reshoot the show’s pilot, demanding a “dirtier” aesthetic.
By the start of the fourth season, Game of Thrones’ mammoth production stretches across the world, filming in Croatia, Iceland, Morocco and multiple Northern Ireland locations, and is HBO’s most successful (and costly) series, with 5.4 million viewers watching the season three finale on the paid U.S. cable network and a record 5.9 million illegally downloading the episode, according to digital piracy news site TorrentFreak.
During a break from filming, Game of Thrones’ executive story editor, co-producer and writer Bryan Cogman considers the show’s success: “I didn’t personally know if a show that was this complicated, strange and genre-bending would find a huge audience. It’s been very gratifying.” Cogman, like the rest of the cast, credits much of Game of Thrones’ accomplishments to Martin, who not only serves as a producer but also writes one episode per season. Though much has been made of the ample nudity and gory violence, it’s the hirsute author’s ability to subtly paint in shades of moral greys, Cogman argues, that elevates the show.
HBONikolaj Coster-Waldau and Lena Headey in Game of Thrones.
“The genius of George is that he makes you empathize with a man who in the first 80 pages of the book pushes a child out the window,” he says, citing the improbably sympathetic story arc of hobbled “Kingslayer” Jaime Lannister. Cogman’s job, then, is to take Martin’s rapidly escalating vision and reshape it as palatable television (a format which the author rejected as being too small for his pre-Thrones scripts).
“We’re always trying to top ourselves in every way,” Cogman explains. “We really want this to be the greatest show ever seen.” Logically, then, Cogman claims Season 4 is “without question our biggest in terms of spectacle. We’re not cutting back on anything: sex, violence or profanity.” He then adds, carefully, “This is a big season for Jon Snow.”
Moments later, Snow himself returns, glasses in hand thanks to a hustled production assistant, and Cogman ceeds the focus to the “handsome star of television and movies.” “I always knew he was a lead in the show,” Harington says when informed of Cogman’s comments. But, as the oft-cited quote goes, “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die,” and Martin — who is currently penning the sixth of the seven planned Song novels — has yet to seal Snow’s fate.
“I don’t want to know if Jon lives or dies. I want it to be a surprise,” Harington claims. If he were to perish, though, the actor wishes Snow “a good death. Something epic. Taking out a dragon maybe.” And what would Harington do in such a scenario? “I’d go somewhere warm with less beards.”
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