Kit Harington

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We get to hear what he most loves about game of Thrones, working with such a great cast and CGI dogs! He also goes into depth about playing the role of ‘The Bastard’ in the TV show giving us great insight into the world that he has immersed himself into.
Becky got to chat with him about the release of Season 1 on DVD and Blu-ray which is our to buy now.
Did you expect it to be such a big hit?
I didn’t, I was naive when it came to film work and TV and obviously I’d watched loads but when the actual process came along, it was a long process to it coming out – from the pilot to it coming out and I didn’t know what to expect. I thought it was going to appeal to a certain group of people and to some extent it broke out of that group and keeps doing so. It was a shock for me but a really nice one and continues to be.
Do you get people shouting ‘bastard’ at you in the street?!
Not as much as I thought. You do get people shouting ‘bastard’ at then you go ‘oh, thanks’ but it’s always done with a sense that they’re enjoying the show so that again is always a nice thing. I think playing a character like that is interesting. He’s got that chip on his shoulder, that thing, that name that’s attached to him like Tyrion has ‘The imp’ he has ‘The bastard’ and I think that was one of the things appealed to me when I got the script through the door. He’s got an albino wolf, he’s a bastard and he’s separated, what does that make him? That’s the first point of call when you go to creating a character – that’s the thing he has that rides on him the whole time.
In this world that we create, a bastard child, an illegitimate child is a real shame on the family. But it’s never a shame on the man that’s done the disloyalty, all of the guilt rides on the child which is one of the hugely unfair things about this world. It’s a rule in these Kingdoms that the second name of a bastard child is ‘Snow’ if he’s of the North ‘River’ if he’s born of the River land, ‘Flower’ if he’s born of the Southern Lands and ‘Stone’ if he’s born of the Dragon’s Den’ and I quite like those names, it’s where you’re from. But essentially what it’s saying is you’re not of a family, you’re of a place, you are a nobody and so Jon Snow, every time he says ‘I’m Jon Snow’ people instantly say ‘oh, you’re a bastard then’.
Did you watch Season 1?
I did, I watched it once. I don’t like to delve into it too much and re-watch it because I dont think that’s helpful acting-wise. It’s important to know the whole story and see how everything’s done so you know how your part fits in even though you kind of know anyway. I think it’s important to watch it once so you can see what your character arc and character development looks like throughout the first series moving into the second. I go back every now and again for the second season to watch bits to re-jig my mind about what I’m doing so I dont go off path of the character for season 2 and create a different character.
For season 2, I didn’t read anyone elses bits of the story. I’ve read the books so I know what happens but, i didn’t read the other bits of the series because I;m so isolated from it, it doesn’t affect me at all. And I wanted to watch season 2 as you would, as a viewer would to enjoy it more because I dont want to know what happens so it’s a shock to me too.
As a character you’re very isolated Jon Snow?
I think Jon from early on you can see that he wanted to go to the Night’s Watch. That’s the only place as a bastard that he can prove himself. If he stayed at the castle, he’s going to become a dogsbody for the family and always be seen as an outsider. At the Night’s Watch everyone’s equal and that’s where his uncle was and that’s where he can prove himself. What he finds when he gets there is very different to what he expects. His family are all separated, his father dies and as he goes on, it’s a more and more lonely place than he thought it would be. In an ideal world, he thought he’s be going home every three years, see the family and then go back again.
What are the differences between Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings?
I think there are similarities to be made. The big difference between the two fantasies are that in LOTR, you have the All Seeing Eye, the dark, the evil, the bad side and then you have Gandalf, the White Wizard, the good people and good has to win over evil. The main difference in GoT is that there is no ultimate evil and there is no ultimate good, everyone is flawed. Jon Snow is probably one of he more sympathetic characters but he still does bad things throughout the series so it is much more blurred than good and bad.
What was the training like and working with animals?
I had to do a lot of physical work. If I dont do weights work i get kind of kind of skinny and Jon has grown up in a training yard his whole life and wielded a sword, these people are heavy set people so I wanted to get physically bigger. These long days of wielding a sword, and running about, you had to be quite fit so I got into shape for it and bulked up a bit. We did a lot of sword training but not as much as I’d have liked because of time but I had some experience from drama school. I love the physical stuff and the fighting because you can immerse yourself in it.
Working with the dogs could be….. tricky! Animals are not always easy to work with. That saying ‘never work with children and animals’ – the children were brilliant, I’ve never worked with more professional people. The animals just want the piece of food in your hard. They were too adorable, that was the problem. They were the cutest dogs and I fell in love with my dog ‘Cooper’. I rang up and told HBO and said I want as much time with the dog as possible to create a bond with it but that was me being naive as a young actor as they need to be with the trainer the whole time or it wont do what it’s told. In the end they cut it well and the dogs did what they were told but I’m glad that they’re CGI in this season. I’ve seen the CGI wolves and they look incredible – they’re bigger. In the first season they were puppies really, in the second season they’re full grown and there’s a big difference and they’re really impressive.
Who’s performance do you most admire in the first series?
Peter Dinklage does a fantastic job. I’ve done an American accent for a film and doing an accent that isn’t your own, especially on a scale of thing this size is really difficult because you’re really aware of it. Peter handled it brilliantly, and he’s got a great English accent and on top of that, he brought that character to life perfectly. If you read the books, that is exactly how he is. And I got to work with Sean (Bean) , I’ve grown up watching Sean and I got scenes with him, for my first TV job, that insane for me.
Do you feel tied into Game of Thrones now?
People say to me, ‘are you signed for many seasons? ‘ I say ‘yeah, i signed for six’ and they’re be like ‘oooo, you’re tied in’ and I’ll reply with ‘yeah, I’m tied into an HBO TV show that is luckily being a success and I’m an actor and I’m working’, I’m really really lucky. It has changed my career trajectory phenomenally but if this is it for me, this is pretty good I think.
It’s good to be a bastard!
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heyuguys.co.uk via kit-harington
 
TV shows don’t get any more violent, sex-filled and treacherous than HBO’s epic Game of Thrones. They also don’t get any more Northern. Brit powerhouse Sean Bean heads up a stellar cast of old and new Northern faces who spend the majority of the show’s ballsy first series prepping for a bloody-battle with the South. With the show available to buy on DVD and Blu-ray as of today, we caught up with famous face Kit Harington, AKA the valiant warrior and bastard son Jon Snow, for a quick chat. Check out the Q+A below where Kit talks about the challenges of playing Jon, the physical demands that came with the role and even spills some titillating details of what we can expect when the show returns this spring…
What originally attracted you to the role of Jon Snow?
I think it was two and half years ago that I got the pilot through and it’s weird now thinking about reading it because I know what happens in the story and I know Jon’s story, but when I originally read it it was quite a bizarre script and it took some getting your head around but initially the character was all there and I was just attracted to it from the word go. It was just one of those scripts where you go ‘I can do this and I want to do this’ and you get excited by it and it was a HBO script which I was also pretty excited about.
The books have been out for a while. Was it harder going into the project knowing Jon’s character arc?
Yeah, I mean I love how we have source materials to work from, I love the fact that there’s these books behind the series. Some people don’t want to know where there character goes or know anything about the original source material but I loved it. I had it all there in a book in front of me, so I poured over the book for a long time trying to figure him out. But yeah, there’s a point when you can rely on the original material too much and you have to look at the script more and just try to focus on where he is in the first series at the start of the story.
So yeah, it had its issues but at the same time I think it was useful to refer back to George’s (RR Martin, Author) books and try to get an interpretation that’s good for a TV script and an interpretation that’s for the book. They can be slightly different at times but if you put the two together you come up with your own take on him.
Series one hints that Jon is destined for big things. Does this add pressure on your portrayal of him?
I think it’s more exciting than anything else. Again, when I read that first pilot, even having not read the books you could see he has that mystery about him. There’s the question of his mother, he was singled out from his family as the bastard child and he finds this white wolf as appose to all these other wolves. So there’s that thing about him that sets him apart slightly and of course as the series goes on he goes off and has his own story arc and it does feel like there’s bigger things to come from him and I think there is. He has a great story but as far as the pressure goes I just like it. I like that there’s a lot riding on him but there is pressure in that there are fans out there who know who he is and have big ideas about what he is and what he should be so it’s about trying to live up to those expectations and also maintain a mystery about him and an excitement about him but not get too far ahead of yourself so you’ve got an arc to carry on with. So not a whole load of pressure, I just enjoy it.
It looks like quite a physical role, did you enjoy that side of things?
I always really enjoyed sword fighting at drama school and I love stage fighting and if I can do a stunt in the show I want to do it myself, if they’ll let me and I’m insured to do it. Sometimes you just can’t do everything, but yeah all the sword fighting we did and all the horse riding…I’d never ridden a horse before so that was a new thing for me. I find with the physical work you lose yourself far easier because you’re not trying to think as much you just kind of go with it. I enjoyed getting into the thick of it.
How loyal is it to the second novel?
The original idea was that the first book is the first series, the second book is the second series and so on. That’s still the case but it’s always going to be an adaptation, so the writers are making clear that. Whereas the first book is the first series, it drifts, there are blurred lines between the books and the TV series and that will continue to happen. So bits of the third book will bleed into the second and so on and it may get more adapative at it goes on but that’s how you have to do it if you want to make a thrilling TV series as well as staying true to the books. You have to make sure people know it’s an adaptation rather than a strict telling and there are more added scenes that weren’t in the books and there’s more scenes that have been taken away and characters that have been taken away. We come out with a nice middle ground hopefully.
What’s in store for Jon in season 2?
At the end of season one we see that he’s definitely not going to join The Fray down with his brother and down South where all the political turmoil’s going on and the wars are happening. We see that he’s heading out North beyond The Wall. So his story gets more and more isolated from the rest of the story whereas in the first season we did see him interact with his family and his brother, now he’s further away from that. It was stranger this season because it was almost like we were doing this separate TV series. It’s a bit like Viserys story line across the Narrow Sea, where two very separate stories go on.
Season one had loads of sex and violence, does season 2 top that?
Yeah, it does. I thought that and then I read the end of episode one. It gets really dark, of course before it was dark but now we’re going into war and what war and battle means in this world and it’s a whole new thing. Before you had battles and incest and you had some really graphic sex scenes, anyone who was offended by the first season really isn’t going to enjoy the second. I’m not sure if it gets worse, it just carries on very much in the same vein. It’s a very graphic world, it’s a graphic novel that George has written and we wanted to be true to that and make this world as vivid and as shocking as we could and it carries on. There’s more sex, there’s more violence, there’s more blood!
Is there anything in particular from season two that you’d tell fans to look out for?
Yeah, without spoiling any particular scene because I don’t want to ruin it for anyone who hasn’t read the books. Essentially all of my stuff was filmed in Iceland and we were filming in such stunning locations whereas before things were shot in Belfast. Any snowy area we had to fake snow, any big land mark was CGI – this is all real and that’s why I’m really excited about my part of the storyline in the second season. We were on location the whole time, there was no studio stuff at all. So I think the things you can look forward to are Jon finally gets to meet a girl, she’s an actress called Rose Leslie and she’s fantastic. There’s a whole host of new actors who come on across the board during the show like Stephen Dillane and Carice Van Houten that you’re going to be able to invest in new characters, while you lost Sean Bean you’ve now got Stephen Dillane, it’s a new story from the start. It asks you to invest in a whole host of new characters but from what I’ve heard and what I know they do a terrific job and it’s going to be very exciting.
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northernnoise.co.uk via kit-harington
 
http://bcove.me/d08amw25
http://link.brightcove.com/services...Y4h2gsONEuiYgmhMw_6Z52KwP&bctid=1494648191001

It’s a few days before the Screen Actors Guild Awards in January and Kit Harington is exhausted as he arrives at NBC. The British actor, who has so eloquently brought to life Jon Snow in HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” has been running around getting ready for the ceremony, taking meetings and knocking out interviews.
Despite his admission he didn’t quite achieve a full night’s sleep last night, he peps up quickly as the cool air of the Access Hollywood studio on the NBC lot hits his skin, which offers just a hint of a sun kissed glow.
Fast paced days like today are becoming a regular occurrence for the early 20-something since his portrayal of Ned Stark’s illegitimate son won him the admiration of fans of not just of great television, but from lovers of George R.R. Martin’s book series.
As he told AccessHollywood.com a year ago, during a phone call from the set of “Silent Hill: Revelation 3D” in Canada, he had just one major credit to his name – an appearance in the stage version of “War Horse” – when he landed the role of Jon.
“What I do remember from getting the audition is just going, ‘Right! I really want this one,’ and luckily for me it was three auditions and I got it and I was over the moon,” he told Access at the time.
A year after Access first named Kit a Rising Star, he’s being courted by fashion and lifestyle magazines, and landing parts in Hollywood films like “The Seventh Son,” with Julianne Moore and Oscar winner Jeff Bridges. He’s also ready for Jon Snow’s next chapter in Season 2 of “Game of Thrones.”
In the sixth installment in AccessHollywood.com’s weekly “GOT” countdown Q&A series, our own Laura Saltman sat down with Kit to find out just what happens next for Jon, who fans last saw on horseback, joining his brothers in the Night’s Watch on a journey beyond The Wall.
AccessHollywood.com’s Laura Saltman: “Game of Thrones” returns on April 1. Is that a good day?
Kit Harington: Yeah, yeah it is. It’s classic prank day in England.
Laura: It’s no joke the fans love this show… Do you — now that it’s such a huge success — feel a sense, as part of the show, not to spoil everything for the fans?
Kit: Yeah, I mean it’s quite a tricky one, because obviously, it’s based on books, so you don’t know what you can say and can’t say. Some people have read the books… and a lot of people haven’t and they’re just following the TV show. So, you just kind of step carefully about what you can and can’t say.
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accesshollywood
 
Laura: What I’ve heard, is there’s a bigger storyline for [Jon Snow]. There’s going to be even more of him in Season 2.
Kit: There is. He’s got such an isolated storyline. He’s so separated from the rest of the story, a bit like Daenery’s [Emilia Clarke’s] part is. You’ve got these kinds of three sections to the story, but he’s very separated from it. But he gets to do some really, kind of crazy, cool stuff in the second season and… he doesn’t really stick to the rest of the storyline, as it were. He kind of goes off in his own way.
Laura: Last we saw, he was heading off toward The Wall. Will we pick up right from that moment in Season 2?
Kit: He’s going North of The Wall. He’s got to The Wall and he’s decided that they have to tackle various obstacles that lie beyond The Wall, so he’s going off and doing that, so he has to forsake everything…his brother’s commitments, his father’s death, his family — he puts that all behind him and he kind of concentrates on the bigger picture, which is what may or may not be lying in that wilderness, sort of beyond The Wall.
VIDEO: “Game Of Thrones” Star Kit Harington On The Impact Of Season 1’s Sean Bean Shocker - Part 2
Laura: So one of the things when you go beyond The Wall is we’re looking for Benjen [Stark]. So are we going to find him?
Kit: I won’t tell you, but obviously, that’s one of Jon’s priorities… He’s lost his father and he’s going beyond The Wall to try and find his uncle. He needs some sort of — some family member — to survive, really. So, yeah, he is going to look for him and that is a priority for him, but whether he finds him or not, you have to wait and see.
Laura: For people who don’t know, what is a ‘wildling’ ‘cause we’ve only seen like one? Will we see more?
Kit: You will see more. They play a big part of my storyline in the second season. They’re basically free folk or free people who live beyond The Wall and don’t kind of abide [by] any sort of king or realm as it were. And they [are] cut off by The Wall, and so you don’t see much of them in the first season, but Jon interacts with them a lot in the second season. They’re kind of – I mean, we see Osha in the first season, who, you get a feeling for what the wildings are. They’re very kind of ‘wild,’ as it were.
Laura: Hence the name.
Kit: Hence the name, yeah. And they kind of — they live with the fear of these other things, which are The Others and the White Walkers. They know the dangers that lie beyond The Wall better than the people who live South, so that’s what Jon goes and learns really.
Laura: Will we see more of the White Walkers in Season 2?
Kit: You will. They play a part. They do.
Laura: So more of those two mysterious things that were kind of set up in the first season. It’s kind of like the Smoke Monster from ‘Lost’?
Kit: It is, yeah… I always think they look a bit like Predator. You know, a bit… They’re kind of like ice Predators.
PHOTOS: From Worcester To Wildlings: Hot Shots Of ‘Game Of Thrones’ Star Kit Harington
Laura: Was it different filming Season 2 because you had done Season 1 and you knew it had been a global success?
Kit: Yeah, it was…. The first season — no one really knew how it would go down. It’s so — it is very different from anything that’s done on TV at the moment and so we didn’t know whether it would be well received or not… When it was, it was such a boost. I was terrified [originally]. I had sleepless nights before the first season came out.
Laura: Really?
Kit: Yeah. It was such a long process from pilot to the season coming out, that when it actually did air, I never thought it would happen. So yeah, Season 2, I’m just really excited about. I’m not scared about it anymore. It’s been well received and I think Season 2 is gonna be really epic.
PHOTOS: Arya! Daenerys! The Hound! Robb & More At The “Game Of Thrones” DVD Release Party
Laura: And this was really like your first major thing… so how has your life changed then since the first season came out?
Kit: I suppose it creeps up on you. You don’t realize it’s happening, but all I’ve felt so far is like huge positivity from people who meet you and say, ‘Oh, I watch the show. I really like it.’ I‘ve had no bad experiences with it so far.
Laura: Have you had any celebrities come up to you at the Emmys?
Kit: Yeah, that’s the weirdest thing.
VIDEO: Kit Harington Reveals Who Are The “Game Of Thrones” Celebrity Fans - Part 3
Laura: Who has come up to you?
Kit: So I had Seth Green come up to me at Comic-Con…
Laura: ‘Robot Chicken!’
Kit: Yeah! And he was raving about the show to me, and it was so bizarre because I grew up watching ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and ‘Austin Powers,’ and obviously he’s in ‘Family Guy,’ and he’s done lots of my favorite things, so I [got] kind of a bit dumbstruck when I met him. And I had the guys from ‘It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia,’ which is one of my favorite shows… I met them at a party out here… We had a bit of a ‘love in.’ It was like, ‘No! I love your show!’ ‘No! I love your show!’
PHOTOS: “Game Of Thrones” Stars In Street Clothes
Laura: We have a Kit [here at Access] – Kit Hoover.
Kit: There’s always one.
Laura: Your real name is Christopher – so where did Kit come from?
Kit: Kit was, I think… the priest who married my parents was called Kit and I think they kind of just really liked him and his name, so that’s where it came from. I didn’t know my name was Christopher until I was 11 and I was at school and you have to fill out these entrance exams to see what set you’re in and I put down Kit Harington and they went, ‘That’s not your name!’ And [I said], ‘I think I’d know.’ And they went, ‘No, your name’s Christopher.’ And I was like, ‘What?’ So I went home and had a stern talk with my mum.
Laura: So it was on your birth certificate, but they never used it?
Kit: Yeah, because your mum carries your passport the whole time. So I never knew my name was Christopher. I had this kind of weird moment when I was 11, like, ‘Who am I? What is my name?’ I had to think, ‘Am I Chris? Am I Christopher?’ And I’d been called Kit up until that point.
Laura: So if you’re walking down the street and someone yells ‘Chris! Christopher!’ you wouldn’t even turn around?
Kit: No. I’d make a point of not turning around. I’d keep just keep walking, like, ‘Don’t call me that.’
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accesshollywood
 
Interview with just Kit (slightly spoilerish)


fan pics

tumblr: f*ckyeahkitharington

spoilers (Kit's so bad at not telling any spoilers:rofl:)
 
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