It’s not uncommon for fans of any popular TV show or movie to confuse the stars of those productions with the characters they’re portraying. How much of a problem this is for the actors who have to deal with it certainly varies (and I can only imagine it’s especially annoying for those who play villainous characters). Whatever the role, however, being treated like someone you’re not certainly has its challenges, and Game of Thrones star Kit Harington recently opened up about the mental health rabbit hole he went through after playing Jon Snow on the HBO saga.
Kit Harington got real about his mental health on the upcoming podcast The Hidden 20%, talking about his struggles with alcohol that led him to go to rehab after Game of Thrones ended its eight-season run in 2019. In the episode he said (via the Daily Mail) that his issues got worse as the series’ popularity increased, telling host Ben Branson:
People would treat me like the character. But in my life I didn't feel like that at all. And that [led me to] some psychological scarring.
Because fans expected him to be like Jon Snow, Kit Harington said he tried “to project this image of utter sophistication and coolness about what I was doing but genuinely being sort of terrified about everything.”
While there was certainly a lot of praise being heaped on the actor at the time, he said he was particularly bothered by “demeaning” comments like being called “Game of Thrones hunk Kit Harington.” Seeing what was being said about him was a slippery slope, he said:
That is a dangerous rabbit hole to fall down because you find all of the bad stuff that people are saying as well as the nice stuff.
Thankfully Kit Harington was able to step away from acting for a year after the series inspired by George R. R. Martin’s books concluded. Now fans continue to hope that they’ll see Jon Snow again in one of the upcoming Game of Thrones spinoff series.
The GoT series finale saw Jon Snow exiled from Seven Kingdoms as punishment for being a Queenslayer, and was sent back to The Wall with the Free Folk to live the rest of his life as a member of the Night’s Watch. In June 2022 it was announced that a Jon Snow-centered sequel was in development, with Kit Harington tapped to reprise the role and continue the popular character’s adventures.
However, as of November 2023, HBO CEO Casey Bloys provided an update on the franchise’s in-development scripts, saying that other than the Tales of Dunk and Egg adaptation, there’s nothing else in that world that’s close to being green-lit.
You can hear more of what Kit Harington has to say about Game of Thrones and his mental health when The Hidden 20% premieres Wednesday, January 17, and you can always relive the epic fantasy drama or its spinoff House of the Dragon by streaming the series with a Max subscription.
