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.
All of which has presented Harington with two sorts of pressure in his career: first, learning to live up to the expectations of fans as the moral center of “Thrones,” and then, defying those expectations as he sets a path toward becoming something more complicated than simply an icon. “I’m not really driven by wanting to play heroes right now,” he says. “Every script I read at the moment is about characters who are deeply flawed and in some ways antiheroes. And that doesn’t necessarily go along with my casting, so it’s going to take a bit of work to fight against that.”
But give Harington this: After years of filming the battle between good and evil, he knows how to put up a fight.
Before he can be fully post-“Thrones,” Harington has to get through the airing of the eighth season — six final episodes that promise to set the internet ablaze on Sunday nights this spring. “They went balls out, I think is the term,” Harington says of Season 8. “They could have easily set the same budget as they did for Season 7, but they went bigger.” Harington believes that a reason for the expanded scope of an already grand show was to “establish that HBO can do this” before a future spinoff. Outgoing network CEO Richard Plepler tells Variety that the planned prequel series, set to star Naomi Watts, is “something special. We weren’t just trying to re-engineer the genes of what ‘Game of Thrones’ was, but we had a fresh, exciting perspective that didn’t let the franchise go away.”
With the power to define the prestige-network pecking order and the balance-sheet impact to necessitate a speedy comeback, “Thrones” is the most scrutinized show in the world. And Harington is among those applying the scrutiny. He watches each new episode alone, and he also has gone back and referenced past scenes in order to situate his performance along Jon’s long emotional arc. What he has found hasn’t always pleased him. “Looking back at the entirety of ‘Thrones,’ there’ll be 70 percent of the scenes that I’ll just never be happy with. I’ve come to terms with that.” The upcoming eighth season represented something of a breakthrough. “I know who this is now, and I’m at peace with who this is. I just got a feeling that it’s the most satisfied I will be with my work as Jon Snow.”
– Courtesy: Variety.com
