When Marvel’s Eternals drops in November, it will be the first major thing Kit Harington has done since Game of Thrones ended two years ago. (Unless you count Friends: The Reunion.) There’s a good reason why the actor has been a bit slow to find a follow-up role worthy of Jon Snow: He took a big break after the show finally wrapped up. He deserved a break, but according to a new interview, it was about more than that.
On a recent episode of Sirius XM’s The Jesse Cagle Show (as caught by The Hollywood Reporter), Harington opened up about how spending so long on a show filled with violence and emotional intensity wound up breaking him.
“I went through some mental health difficulties after Thrones, and during the end of Thrones, to be honest,” Harington admitted. “I think it was directly due to the nature of the show and what I had been doing for years.”
So when he was finally done with Snow, he made the decision not to hunt for more work. Instead he decided to “really concentrate on myself.” It turned out to be the smart move. “I’m really happy I did that.”
There was one catch, though. “Just when I was wanting to come back to work the pandemic hit,” he said. But he’s been able to get back to work. On top of Eternals, he filmed an episode of Amazon Prime’s Modern Love, for its second season. That was a nice change from dragons and bloodshed.
“You don’t have to live in that intense place all the time,” Harington told Cagle. “Why don’t you do something that takes the weight off? Why don’t you do something fun?”
You can watch Harington discuss his immediate post-Thrones life in the video above.
(Via THR)