Kit Harington Addresses His Mental Health Following ‘Game of Thrones’ Finale

Kit Harington is finally opening up about his mental health a little more than two years after the Game of Thrones series finale aired. Harington famously avoided the public eye and spent some time in a rehab facility in the spring of 2019. He opened up about that experience in a new interview on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show this week.

Harington is out promoting Modern Love, a romantic comedy anthology series with a new season coming to Amazon Prime Video this month. Harington appears in one episode of the new season, which Cagle noted is a lot different from the grim world of Westeros. Harington acknowledged: “Yeah, I think there’s something to that, you’re right. I kind of went through some mental health difficulties after Thrones and during the end of Thrones, to be honest.”

“I think it was directly to do with the nature of the show and what I’ve been doing for years,” Harington went on. “I think I took sort of a break after Thrones where ‘I don’t want to work for a year. I want to really kind of concentrate on myself.’ I think I’m really, I’m really happy I did that.”

Harington also said that he might have been prepared to get back to work soon, but “you couldn’t predict the pandemic.” He continued: “But yeah, doing this Modern Love episode was a bit like, ‘you don’t have to live in that intense place all the time. Why don’t you do something that takes the weight off? Why don’t you do something fun?’ And I think that was part of my thinking on this one.”

Harington played Jon Snow on Game of Thrones, one of the most central protagonists with the weight of leadership, duty and prophecy on his shoulders. The character was the subject of many fans’ criticism in later seasons, though as many critics have pointed out, most fans took issue with the writing, not the acting. Still, it was frustrating for stars like Harington.

Harington is still best known for Game of Thrones, and though he has reserved time for some lighter projects like Modern Love, he is by no means finished with big-budget action franchises. He will officially join the Marvel Cinematic Universe this fall in Eternals, introducing a race of immortal aliens from the Marvel Comics. Harington will play the character Dane Whitman, who is not one of the Eternals but is a human warrior with a mystical sword who fights beside them. “I’m a big fan of the MCU,” he told Cagle, calling his addition to the world “very exciting.” While Harington did not divulge too much about the movie, he did express how he was very impressed by director Chloé Zhao as well as the cast. “[They are] sort of phenomenal, and wide ranging and diverse, and it just looked like they were doing something really different, with this movie,” he said. “I can’t tell you much about it, but we filmed that pre-pandemic and it’s coming out. Finally. It was sort of frustrating. You got pushed back so much, but now it is, you know, be going on doing some press for that soon. And it’s really exciting.”

Harington should be right at home in this role, of course, and Game of Thrones fans are excited to see him share the screen with his old co-star Richard Madden again. Eternals is set to premiere on Nov. 5, 2021. In the meantime, fans can next catch Harington in Modern Love Season 2, available on Amazon Prime Video on Friday, Aug. 13.