The premiere of the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones is still just over a week away, but even with the publicity blitz in full swing, the show’s cast and crew have endured quite a bit. This is especially true of Kit Harington, the British actor who plays Jon Snow. He claimed that everyone was “broken” by the time that filming had wrapped and, in previous seasons, has sought out therapy to deal with being under such an intense pop cultural microscope. Now the actor is doing Saturday Night Live, which is itself another form of torture.
So far, NBC’s long-running variety show has subjected Harington to basic promos and Leslie Jones forcing him to perform his own walk of shame. In the latest ad for this weekend’s 17th episode of SNL season 44, however, Harington was forced to endure cast member Beck Bennett’s obvious jokes about being in Game of Thrones. “Saturday is coming!” the latter exclaims. “No one’s ever done that before, right?” Harington, meanwhile, assures Bennett that it’s “very clever” and even forces a smile for the camera.
Of course, whether or not the actor’s forced smile is a real forced smile or a professionally acted forced smile remains to be seen. He is, after all, an accomplished actor who’s good at what he does. Then again, the number of times he has probably had to experience bad jokes like Bennett’s, which was on purpose, is probably way too high. I just hope that Harington manages to take a nice, long vacation once all the Thrones hoopla finally dies down.
