The cast of Game of Thrones has the right idea of how to bond with coworkers. Kit Harington, who plays Jon Snow on the HBO series, admits they do “a bit of drinking to get to know each other.”
Because the show has such a multitude of characters, the cast-mates can go long periods of time without interacting with each other on set. Harington spoke to Interview Magazine about this dynamic saying, “Quite often there’s more than one unit filming at one time, so you come back [to the hotel] and it’s nice to hear stories of what they’ve been doing, and the kind of torture that they’ve been through with the show. That’s the kind of bonding that we do, we talk to each other.”
The cast seems to relate nicely to one another—even when they’re imitating their fellow actors. Harington plays the son of Sean Bean (Lord of the Rings) on the series, but before he got the part he had to demonstrate he could mimic the actor’s British accent (all of those who were going to portray Bean’s son’s had to do the same.) “He was encouraging, actually,” Harington noted. “He found it funny that we were all doing his accent. He said we were all doing it well, which was quite nice to hear.”
Harington is somewhat surprised by his newfound fame on Game of Thrones since he started out as a theater actor. Although some parents try to steer their children away from the unpredictable career choice of acting, Harington said his parents were always supportive.
“My parents brought us up in a very clever way, which was that they saw what we were interested in naturally, and then they encouraged whatever that may be,” he said. “When I started sharing a keen interest in drama and the theater, instead of steering me away from it, they encouraged me to see plays, and think about drama school. There was no pushing me or my brother into doing anything that we didn’t want to do.”
Due to Harington’s days spent in drama school, he can quickly name his favorite monologues to perform. “I’ve got a couple of go-to ones, yeah,” he chimed in when the interviewer asked which were his best audition pieces. “Whether I can still remember them I’m not sure, but I always used to do the brilliant speech in Henry V—a speech that Hal gives to the French messenger about tennis balls that he’s delivered. That’s a brilliant speech, if you ever want to give one. And then there’s a speech from the film 25th Hour—a monologue that in the film Edward Norton delivers, which is one of my favorites.”
The third season of Game of Thrones will air on HBO on March 31.
