Kit Harington Pushes Back Against Hero Roles After Jon Snow: ‘They’re Hard to Make Interesting’ and I’d Rather Play ‘F—ed Up People’
Kit Harington is in full villain mode in his new movie “Blood for Dust,” which is exactly the kind of role he’s been looking for since his tenure as the heroic Jon Snow ended on HBO’s “Game of Thrones” in 2019. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, the actor admitted that he grew tired of playing the hero by the end of his run as Jon Snow and is now more interested in tackling “fucked up” guys.
“That is seemingly what I’ve been hunting a bit,” Harington said. “If I look at the roles I’ve taken since playing an out-and-out hero in ‘Game of Thrones,’ I have to admit there seems to be some sort of pushback about playing a hero. I’m not so interested in heroic roles, and if I am, they have to be pretty anti-hero-ish..”
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“My heart goes out to people playing heroes,” he continued. “They’re fucking hard to play and to make interesting. It is more fascinating as an actor, I think, to empathize with someone deeply faulted and wrong, to try and find your way into why they are doing these things. [Playing] a guy who is doing all the right things and is driven by being good, it’s harder to do that. And I think people who do it successfully, who play classically heroic roles, are very talented actors. But at the moment, I just find it more interesting looking for the fucked-up people.”
Harington was preparing to reprise Jon Snow for a time as he was developing a “Game of Thrones” spinoff for HBO centered on the heroic character, but he confirmed earlier this month that the project has been shelved. Perhaps the actor’s resistance to traditional heroes steered him away from playing Jon Snow again.
“I hadn’t really ever spoken about it, because it was in development,” Harington told ScreenRant about the spinoff. “I didn’t want it leaked out that it was being developed. I didn’t want the thing to happen where people kind of start theorizing, getting either excited about it or hating the idea of it, when it may never happen. Because in development, you look at every angle, and you see whether it’s worth it.”
“And currently, it’s not. Currently, it’s off the table, because we all couldn’t find the right story to tell that we were all excited about enough,” he continued. “So, we decided to lay down tools with it for the time being. There may be a time in the future where we return to it, but at the moment, no. It’s firmly on the shelf.”
“Game of Thrones” concluded with Jon Snow’s exile from Westeros as he rides into the Haunted Forest with his direwolf Ghost and the Wildlings to begin a new life. Many fans assumed the spinoff series would’ve picked up with Snow’s adventures with the Wildlings.
Harington’s latest film, “Blood for Dust,” hits select theaters and digital on April 19.
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