During the press tour surrounding the final season of “Game of Thrones,” most of the actors had the same answer when it came to the actor that was most emotional about the series ending — Kit Harington. The Jon Snow actor has never been shy about his tendency to break down and get emotional, especially during the production of the final batch of episodes. Now, it appears that Harington took it upon himself to take care of some “issues” before the finale aired.
According to his publicist, Harington recently checked himself into a “wellness retreat” ahead of the controversial finale from a couple of weekends ago. This news comes after it was reported by Page Six that the actor is being treated for stress and alcohol use due to the emotional end of his “Game of Thrones” tenure.
“Kit has decided to utilize this break in his schedule as an opportunity to spend some time at a wellness retreat to work on some personal issues,” a rep for the actor said in a statement (via Variety).
For those that don’t believe how emotionally invested Harington was in his role as Jon Snow, last weekend’s HBO documentary about the final season of ‘Thrones’ showed a table read of the final scripts. It’s clear that Harington didn’t read the scripts before the reading and his reaction is priceless. He gasps. He cries. He’s applauding. This is obviously a guy that was 100% devoted to his role for almost a decade and has seen it all end.
And of course, it’s only speculation at this point, but it probably didn’t help that this final season of ‘Thrones’ was probably the most controversial yet, with fans petitioning HBO to remake it and others just venting on social media incessantly. Even before the season aired, however, we reported that Harington was already defensive about the final batch of episodes.
He said, “I think no matter what anyone thinks about this season—and I don’t mean to sound mean about critics here—but whatever critic spends half an hour writing about this season and makes their [negative] judgment on it, in my head they can go fuck themselves.”
Obviously, we hope everything goes okay for Harington as he works through whatever he’s working through. As much as people disliked the final season of ‘Thrones,’ it’s definitely not because there’s too much Jon Snow or Kit Harington. In fact, most would have probably liked it better if there was much more.