A recent student of the theater school becomes a world-famous celebrity, a happy husband and father. Lucky twist of fate, right? But you should not reduce a person to his success, says Game of Thrones star Kit Harington. After all, life is a «thing with a hitch.» In anticipation of the Russian premiere of The Eternals, we publish his recent interview.
“You are incredibly serious, you realize how important what you are doing … And you are sitting on the marble steps in a theater school with a script or a play, sipping the hottest coffee. You are all in dramatic black, because you already know everything about life, it remains only to embody it in roles that the audience and critics will remember forever.
So he recalls what he was like 12 years ago at the Central School of Drama in London — with a smile, with condescension to his past. But he also tends to treat his present self with irony: “Actually, you see, little has changed. I still wear black, I drink espresso, I don’t know much about life, and we seem to be talking about important things.”
This is partly true. Kit Harington is all in black, perfect black: he’s wearing jeans, a T-shirt, suede boots. Even his glasses are thin black frames. But there is a suspicion that this is where the similarity between the two Whales ends. There is experience and melancholy in the discreet, I would even say, quiet person across from me at the bar table in a London hotel.
But I don’t have to ask him a leading question, is he really unchanged and could 10 years of work on the Game of Thrones pass without a trace. Because he continues his thought, resolutely refuting his own irony.
Perhaps this is his most characteristic feature — it seems that there is nothing in this world that Kit Harington would not take seriously, would not accept as something important. It seems that the words “half-heartedly”, “easy”, “forget”, “drop” and “pay no attention” are not from his vocabulary and cannot apply to him.
His Byronic appearance is neither an image nor a mask. The discreet elegant man opposite me is the embodiment of maturity and responsibility. I don’t know if it’s a gift or a cross.
Keith Harrington: You see, you graduated from drama school. For a year now you have been starring in the most famous West End show — it was the famous «War Horse», regularly revived at different venues around the world.
Preparing for a role in a play that could become a major event on the British stage — in Chic, a caustic satire. You have preliminary readings with a female director of a frightening will and intellect, and six weeks of rehearsals, half of which is the development of characters strictly according to Stanislavsky.
You, of course, played in the pilot of the series «Game of Thrones» on a major American television network, which is an amazing stroke of luck for a young British actor, but the pilot is terrible, the channel turned it off. And you are already compiling your personal list of future achievements. There is no television or cinema in it, but only genuine, theatrical, on the main stages of Britain …
And then it turns out that the series is renewed. It’s huge, epic, phenomenal. He has incredible success, and your experience in him is a gloomy type of Jon Snow, morally clear, the most heroic of all possible heroes. And it turns out that the main thing that happened to you in life is this series …
Psychologies: You’re saying it was too sharp a turn?
Yes, a complete change in the entire life paradigm, plans, ideas about yourself and what you should and can do! 10 years of life on Game of Thrones. Bonded by contract, tight schedule. From 22 to 32 years old.
All youth, it turns out …
… And also fame. You become in some sense a cult figure, with all the attributes of a cult — you are under a magnifying glass and a paparazzi camera, constant requests for a selfie with you, advertising shootings, the fact that you won’t go to the supermarket anymore, obligations to promote the series, strange publications in the press . It’s imaginable, but preparing for this…massive celebrity assault on you is really no, impossible.
I didn’t know how to react at all when a Russian model posted on her Instagram (an extremist organization banned in Russia) supposedly my naked photos in the bed of a hotel room and claimed that we had an affair and that it happened in Luxembourg. And I have never been to Luxembourg! And he was completely at a loss — he was not ready for such frank and aggressive speculation. Yes, I was not at all ready for anything related to such hard work, with wide popularity. And as a result, he ended up in a drug clinic in Connecticut.
How did all this happen? What exactly were you treated for?
From alcoholism. I got drunk. For a long time. After the end of the series. Yes, and at the end of filming was in depression. The case ended in a riot in a bar and a fight. Then I realized that it was time to “give up”. Although before that I somehow managed to keep my binges a secret even from those closest to me.
But I decided to be treated not because they could find out about it. But because I became … a disgusting person. He was so disgusted with himself that … well, yes, he could do something with himself. I just realized that I was a very, very bad person. I was ashamed of myself. And it would be better for me … not to be at all. Or somehow manage to change. I succeeded. Change. Come to terms with who I’ve become. Whatever that means.
And then there was a lockdown — almost the best time in my life. Beds. Reading. Under the guidance of Rose (actress Rose Leslie — the performer of the role of the wild Ygritte in the series, now the actor’s wife) attempts at meditation, although this is not mine, I am hyperactive, I can not sit still, my relaxation is movement, and meditation is the gym. And poetry.
Yes, you do write poetry…
Bad ones par excellence. But I read a lot of poetry. I am a frequenter of almost all poetry sites in English on the Internet. Jack Underwood’s free verse «Happiness» turned me around in those days. It has a simple, piercing explanation of what happiness is, so airy, light … Happiness is not the circumstances of life, but a feeling.
When the mother came to visit her son in London, they get on the bus, he carries her suitcase. And they are together. When asparagus in the garden is tied with a purple ribbon — and it’s so bright — when nothing is in bloom yet, and purple on light green … Ordinary things are illuminated by a feeling of happiness, yes.
And then I got my hands on the book «The Dispossessed» by Ursula Le Guin. I don’t know why only then — this is my favorite writer since childhood. Well, there, in «The Dispossessed», somewhere closer to the beginning, the hero reflects on mental pain, on the feeling of a fatal loss in life. And he comes to the conclusion that suffering and pain make us learn more about ourselves and the world than happiness. It’s exactly like that.
That is, you do not regard your career rise, your status as a star as incredible, like me, and everyone, probably, it seems good luck?
The fact of the matter is that Game of Thrones and everything that has happened to me over the past 12 years has been an incredible stroke of luck. But luck also needs to be able to survive, to accept. Life is a tricky thing, what is happening to you, seemingly amazing, you yourself can evaluate not so unambiguously.
But yes, everything important and happiest in my life came to me from the Game of Thrones. Rose first. According to the series, we are in love with each other, although we are enemies. And here is the shooting in Iceland, the incredible beauty of nature. Love scenes … And you understand that you are in love, like your hero.
At the same time, the entire film crew involuntarily becomes something like a family: shooting in Iceland ends at 4 pm — the daylight hours are short, the whole evening is ahead, you live in the same hotel, there are no bars or cinemas around. So you’re always together, living side by side, getting closer… Rose and I have been together for 8 years.
We parted, then united, then diverged again. But as a result, we realized that without each other we are worse than together. For me, this is love. Sounds unromantic, right? And for me, this is the most, if you like, sublime romance — that you just feel bad when there is no other around. It’s a real connection, deep. And ours, in my opinion, is only getting stronger. Although Rose is not always enthusiastic about my, for example, jokes …
Oh yes, I saw your April Fool’s prank on YouTube. The bloodied head of Jon Snow in the morning in the refrigerator, where she looked …
It didn’t work out very well, yes. And this horror of hers, a cry, tears and a warning that if I try to crank out the same nonsense again, it’s all over between us … But I tried — I ordered a wax head … Rose considers my humor completely black, asocial and is afraid that he genes passed on to our son.
He is now six months old. How do you feel about fatherhood?
Oh… Rose was expecting a baby, and I asked a friend who recently had a daughter how he experiences this new quality… And he replied that this is such a comprehensive thing that it is impossible to describe. That’s how I would answer. But what I like most now is the unity that a child brings to life: the three of you are now a platoon, a unit, a single team!
I was terribly afraid of the birth of my son, I was not at all ready for him. And then Rose suggested getting a puppy — well, to raise him and so rehearse our parenthood. This is my pure wife! I just adore her amazing pragmatism. It seems that something amazing is coming, namely that it is all-encompassing, and she: we can handle it, just practice …
And it worked! True, the dog grew up dreamy and stupid … But in general, let everyone grow up as they want. I am against drill, I am a supporter of a different type of education.
Which one?
Mom, she is ideal for me. She was a theater playwright. She lived her own life, not dissolving in me and my brother. Nor did we ever doubt her love. This autonomy of a person in a family, in my opinion, is an important thing. But I almost got kicked out of school because I did not recognize authorities. I was not taught to do this — my parents were so far from autocratic attitudes. And from prejudice.
Mom brought us up in … so to speak, gender pragmatism. At the age of six, I asked to buy me a Mighty Max doll — well, from the series about him, and they gave me Polly in a pink girl’s box … My parents were convinced that the world was not divided into men and women. Ideally, it doesn’t share at all. Therefore, perhaps, I doubt the canons of masculinity to which the world is accustomed.
Behind them is the cult of war. And they themselves come from wars — the First and Second World Wars, when a man had to clench his teeth and fight. We still cannot seriously talk about our feelings, because this is a sign of weakness. For me, masculinity is always toxic, even if it is restrained.
But what about your Jon Snow? He is a real male hero, whose sword protects the weak. And how is your Dane Whitman in the new movie The Eternals?
In John there is the vulnerability of an orphan, and the vulnerability of youth, and despair from the burden that has fallen to him. And Dane is a completely restless person. See for yourself soon.
I see a contradiction in what you said about the birth of a son. Platoon, team — there is something military in these words. It turns out that you, with your unit, oppose the rest of the world. Is the world hostile to you?
No, he just doesn’t owe us anything.