Home Movies

Roundtable Interview With Kit Harington On Silent Hill: Revelation

With HBO's Game of Thrones asserting itself as one of television's biggest hits right now, many of you probably know young actor Kit Harington as his popular warrior character Jon Snow. With his Hollywood stock on a huge rise, you can expect to see a heavy dosage of Mr. Harington pretty soon, starting with the horror film Silent Hill: Revelation. In Michael J. Bassett's feature film adaptation of the video game Silent Hill 3, Kit can be seen playing a newly modified version of the character Vincent. Teaming up with Heather Mason (Adelaide Clemens), the two must traverse the darkened world of Silent Hill, finding the truth behind Heather's mysterious upbringing.

Recommended Videos

We Got This Covered: Compared to Game of Thrones, how different is it shooting a horror film? You kind of touched on it already, but can you elaborate between shooting something more adventure centric over a straight horror film?

Kit Harington: There are horror elements of Thrones, which is the interesting thing, especially in my part of the story, so the two aren’t that far apart. The major difference between this and that I suppose is that this is a movie and the other is TV. Where Thrones is shot like a movie, I get 10 hours each season to develop a character, whereas in this I get two hours to develop Vincent, so that’s the major difference. But in shooting, they’re both genre, so they do share similar things, but shooting horror I found to be more emotionally draining, in a strange way.

We Got This Covered: So you already said you were checking something off your to-do list by doing a horror film, so what made you want to do horror?

Kit Harington: I’ve always been a fan of horror films, I really have. I do love, and I’ve said this about thirty times today, I do love The Shining. I mean some of my favorite films are horrors.  The Shining, The Wicker Man, The Ring, the American version of The Ring I love. Yeah, so I love horror films, so I kind of immediately  responded to that. Also, I think its sort of Lynch-ian in this movie, kind of strange and bizarre, and I love David Lynch so that definitely appealed to me.

We Got This Covered: So my next question, which I now have to ask as you’re obviously a genre fan. If you had to pick one horror film, what would be your favorite?

Kit Harington: It’s a toss-up between The Shining, because I fucking love Kubrick, and not strictly a horror, but I guess it is, the one film I never got through, that I cannot sit through and I’ve tried numerous times, is Inland Empire by David Lynch. I can’t get through it. It scares the bejesus out of me. I think he’s a master of fear, David Lynch. Blue Velvet is another, but that isn’t really a horror. I don’t know where you place Lynch in the horror category. But no. The Shining. It has to be The Shining.

We Got This Covered: So getting back to your show Game of Thrones, there’s a lot of moral ambiguity amongst every character. Where do you see your character, Jon Snow falling? Is he a clear-cut protagonist? Or can he be perceived as someone who is too naive for his own good.

Kit Harington: I see Jon as a goodie, I think he’s a good person. The thing I love about Thrones is that everyone has a bad side, they’re like real human beings. I know it’s been said a million times in Thrones, but they’re not black or white, they’re very muddied characters. I think Jon has a bad side to him, but I think as far as people go in this series, he’s trying to do the right thing. He stands up for people weaker than himself, he wants to be loyal to people, fights for good, all he sees is good, and he gets it wrong most of the time. I think he’s a good person.

We Got This Covered: Do you see him continuing down this path?

Kit Harington: Yeah, unless something drastic happens to him, then yeah.

We Got This Covered: With two successful seasons down on Game of Thrones, what can fans expect from Season 3 that will match or surpass the hype now surrounding it?

Kit Harington: I think it’s going to be the best season to date, if there is a best season, and I hate saying something is the best, but we’ve always been looking forward to this season. The writers made note and did not try to hide the fact this was the season they were working towards. It’s going to be fantastic.

We Got This Covered: Is there any way you can give a little more detail, obviously without spoiling anything?

Kit Harington: I can’t spoil anything, but it’s the season of betrayals. Actually, don’t put that, it’s too spoilery.  [Looks to the side for approval] Wait, no, Ok, yeah, it’s the season of betrayals. That’s not too much. Yes, it’s the season of betrayals.

We Got This Covered: Ok, on a lighter note, with Halloween coming up, what’s your favorite Halloween memory?

Kit Harington: Belfast, two years ago. We were filming Thrones, then going out, and if you ever want to go to a good place for Halloween, Belfast rocks it out. Awesome, the people there just love it.

We Got This Covered: Looks like I’ll be keeping that in mind!

That concludes our interview but we’d like to thank Kit very much for talking with us. Be sure to check out Silent Hill: Revelation, in theaters this weekend.