King of the heels! Kit Harington loved playing Jon Snow on all eight seasons of Game of Thrones, but he had one qualm with the character — the costume.
“[It] weighed 33 pounds and you’d carry all of that on your shoulders all day. So, 33 pounds for 10 hours,” Harington said in the May 2019 issue of Esquire. “And then you’ve got the sword, and that weighs two kilograms, which is another X number of pounds.”
But the discomfort did not stop there! The British actor continued, “Plus, I was in f–king high heels because I’m short and they need me to look taller than other people, so I’m carrying fifty pounds in high heels.”
Harington explained that wearing such a heavy outfit for long periods of time would take a toll on his body. “You’d have about a week or two where [you] went into shock, going, ‘I can’t, I’m knackered,” he recalled. “But you just kind of get into it and your muscles build up, and it was actually quite a good workout every day. You didn’t need to go to the gym.”
The eighth and final season of the award-winning HBO series premiered on Sunday, April 14. In January, the Gunpowder alum opened up about the physical and emotional toll the last several episodes took on him and his costars.
“The last season of Thrones seemed to be designed to break us,” he told GQ Australia. “Everyone was broken at the end. 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.”
He continued, “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.’”
While shooting GoT was difficult, Harington has the show to thank for introducing him to actress Rose Leslie, who played his love interest Ygritte. The pair fell in love on set, got engaged in September 2017 and tied the knot in June 2018.
Harington told Vogue Italia in 2016 that his favorite memory from the show was falling for Leslie, now 32, during season 2. “[I loved filming in Iceland] because the country is beautiful, because the Northern Lights are magical, and because it was there that I fell in love,” he gushed. “If you’re already attracted to someone, and then they play your love interest in the show, it’s becomes very easy to fall in love.”
