Kit Harrington On How The Cast Felt After Shooting The Final Season Of Game Of Thrones: 'Everyone Was Broken'
ET Online- Kit Harington doesn’t miss Game of Thrones — yet. The 32-year-old actor covers the January/February issue of GQ Australia, and inside the magazine, he opens up about being pushed to the limit filming GOT’s eighth and final season… so much so, that he felt “f**king sick of this.” “The last season of Thrones, seemed to be designed to break us. Everyone was broken at the end,” Harington says. “I don’t know if we were crying because we were sad it was ending or if we were crying because it was so f**king tiring.” “We were sleep deprived. It was like it was designed to make you think, ‘Right, I’m f**king sick of this,'” he adds. “I remember everyone walking around towards the end going, ‘I’ve had enough now. I love this, it’s been the best thing in my life, I’ll miss it one day — but I’m done.'”
After nearly a decade of playing Jon Snow, Harington says he’s most looking forward to the monotony of everyday life. “I think people who don’t work in film or TV don’t realize quite how disorientating it is being away from home all the time,” he remarks. “The process of going to work, having a day with your colleagues, coming back to your family, cooking, having stuff in the fridge…it sounds odd to say, but it’s the thing I’m looking forward to most. After nine years I’ll be at home. In one place. Static.”
GOOD. I’m glad the cast is tired and broken and hurting. That’s exactly how I want the Game of Thrones cast to feel after shooting the 8th and final season. It would’ve been concerning if everyone had walked away with smiles on their faces, happy to have gone through the experience. Fuck that. I want Game of Thrones to emotionally beat the shit out of its cast the same way it emotionally beats the shit out of its millions of viewers. There are episodes of that show where afterwards I just have to sit in silence and think about what the fuck I just watched. Game of Thrones relentlessly punches you in the face and leaves you begging for more. So I want the cast to actually feel like they’ve gone through the battles they were pretending to go through.
Imagine if all the quotes coming from people like Kit Harington and Emilia Clarke and Peter Dinklage were like, “What a wonderful experience the last season was. My my. What a journey. What a pleasant journey.” That would suck. That would be #NotMyGameOfThrones. I’m glad the actors are dying for the show to be over. I’m glad they’re unhappily crawling towards the end on their hands and knees. That means the show stuck to what it does best and what it does best is rip your heart out and feed it to you. The best parts of GOT is when they take your favorite character and cut his head off unexpectedly or when they take a happy occasion, like say a wedding, and turn it into the biggest bloodbath in television history. Those quotes from Harington are the best possible hype machine for GOT fans. I can’t wait until April.