Never really got much of a plan: Kit Harington on career post ‘Game of Thrones’

By PTI

NEW DELHI: After spending over a decade playing just one character, “Game of Thrones” star Kit Harington says he now wants to take up parts that are a “bit lighter” and not time-consuming.

Harington rose to global stardom with his role as Jon Snow, a brooding warrior and one of the pivotal characters, in the HBO epic fantasy show that ended in May 2019 after eight seasons.

Asked about his plans post the series, the actor told PTI, “I’m terrible at answering this question because I never really got much of a plan. I just go where the writing looks good and the thing works with my life. And I try and pick the parts that I find interesting.”

Harington, 34, currently features in Amazon Prime Video’s anthology series “Modern Love” and features in the episode “Strangers on a (Dublin) Train”, opposite “Bohemian Rhapsody” actor Lucy Boynton.

“I did this (‘Modern Love’) because it was a bit lighter. You know, for 10 years I did possibly the least comic character on TV. Like literally could not crack a joke. And when they did give me a joke, it just didn’t work. So, doing something like ‘Modern Love’, where there’s a bit of humour and lightness, just felt like a very refreshing thing to do.” 

The actor, who previously featured in another anthology series “Criminal: UK” on Netflix, said he has become a fan of the format as it is “very manageable”.

“I love the anthology stuff. This is an anthology piece. I did ‘Criminal’, which I loved. I’m doing another piece of this, which is quite similar.

“It kind of gives me the opportunity to jump in, tell this little story and get out. And then that little tiny chamber piece exists and hopefully speaks to people. But it’s very manageable,” Harington said.

Another reason for taking up a project like “Modern Love” is that the actor wants to have a varied filmography.

“…I’m doing those single pieces because I spent ten years doing one character. So I want to vary up what I’m doing and do as many things as I can. And I don’t want to get tied into necessarily this same character for a long period of time. I’ve done that for a while.”

Harington described “Modern Love” as a “high-budget indie movie” that was totally opposite to “Game of Thrones”.

“In many ways, I would describe the experience of ‘Modern Love’ as sort of like a high-budget indie movie in a weird sort of way. It feels very opposite to ‘Game of Thrones’, which felt like a big-budget movie. This was a small crew, an intimate way of shooting but with a healthy budget that can make it look amazing,” he said.

“That’s a really satisfying way of working. It’s like doing a little short film. It was half an hour or 40 minutes, which is about a week’s worth of work. And then it was very condensed and I could really concentrate on that story,” he added.

Based on the New York Times column and podcast of the same name, “Modern Love” has been created by John Carney.

The show features stand-alone stories and explores love in its multitude of forms — including sexual, romantic, familial, platonic, and self-love.

In his episode, “Strangers on a (Dublin) Train”, which is set in March 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic began, the actor plays Michael who meets Paula (Boynton) on a train from Galway to Dublin.

The story sees their bond develop into something “meaningful” during the journey, so much so that they decide to opt for the old-school romance by not exchanging numbers or social media contacts and meet again in the traditional way.

Harington called Michael a “nice guy and slightly uptight”, who is not a “cool dude” like his brother Declan, played by Jack Reynor in the episode.

“Michael is slightly buttoned-up, tense and anxious. I can relate to that. I think that there’s a part of me (in there). It was nice transporting yourself back to a place where you sort of might be on a train and you might meet another person and have that flutter of luck that this could be love.

“I’m well past that now. I’m in a marriage. But it was nice to kind of live that kind of dream in my head somewhere,” he said.

The actor is married to his “Game of Thrones” co-star Rose Leslie since 2018.

The couple welcomed their first child earlier this year.

Harington calls himself a “bit of a hopeless romantic”, but at the same time, the British actor said that he does not actually believe in the concept of love at first sight.

“The thing that I find most attractive, the thing that makes me go, ‘Ooh, hello. What’s that’ is laughter. Like if I can laugh with someone. For everyone, that’s different, right? It’s different things for different people. People experience love in different ways.

“I don’t believe, therefore, that love at first sight really is a thing. I think you might think it is. This is an incredibly unromantic thing to say, but I think that love comes through a series of chemical reactions inside your body. For me, it’s laughter and conversation.”