Game of Thrones star sought therapy

Actor Kit Harington has told how playing Jon Snow on HBO’s Game of Thrones took a toll on his personal life.

“It wasn’t a very good time in my life,” the 32-year-old Briton told Variety. “I felt I had to feel that I was the most fortunate person in the world when, actually, I felt very vulnerable. I had a shaky time in my life around there — like I think a lot of people do in their 20s.”

Harington’s anxiety grew worse when his character’s prominence rose on the hit series. As a result, he sought therapy to cope with life in the limelight, he said.

“My darkest period was when the show seemed to become so much about Jon, when he died and came back,” Harington said. “I really didn’t like the focus of the whole show coming onto Jon, even though it was invalidating my problem about being the weak link because things were about Jon. That was a time when I started therapy and started talking to people. I had felt very unsafe, and I wasn’t talking to anyone. I had to feel very grateful for what I have, but I felt incredibly concerned about whether I could even act.”

Harington’s outlook changed and his anxiety lessened as the show continued to have massive success year after year, he said.

“It’s like when you’re at a party, and the party’s getting better and better,” he said. “Then, you reach this point of the party where you’re like, it’s peaked.

“I don’t know what I could find more from this. You realize, well, there isn’t more. This is it. And the more that you can find is actually in the work rather than the enjoyment surrounding it.”

As for the last season of Game of Thrones, “they went balls out, I think is the term,” Harington said. “They could have easily set the same budget as they did for Season 7, but they went bigger.”

The eighth and final season of Game of Thrones arrives on HBO on April 14.