'Game Of Thrones' News: Kit Harington Talks About Unaired Pilot
It's pretty hard to imagine a different version of "Game of Thrones" with the iconic faces now ingrained in minds of fans. However, actor Kit Harington reveals that the show's scrapped pilot could have painted a very different Westeros, though not necessarily better.
In an interview with The Guardian, Harington explained that the original pilot that he shot for the hugely-popular HBO series didn't quite get the look and feel of Westeros right the first time. This includes his first go as Jon Snow which required him to be clean-shaven at first, and even to wear a wig, a far cry from the rugged brother of the Night's Watch that fans are now familiar with.
"They made a lot of mistakes," he said of the show's creators, D.B. Weiss and David Benioff. "It didn't look right, didn't feel right, had nothing different about it."
Get Our Latest News for FREE
The pilot also featured different actors for the main roles and had to be scrapped because it did not quite nail the tone and feel of George R. R. Martin's fantasy novels. To be fair though, no one at the time knew how successful the show would be a fact even Harington admits in the interview.
"We didn't know if it was going to go, and we didn't know if it was going to be any good," he said. "But it was HBO, and it was American TV, so it felt like a huge deal."
Fortunately, Weiss and Benioff adjusted to the failed "Game of Thrones" pilot and opted for a grittier show in line with Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" books and as they say, the rest is history. To this day, Harington says that not many people have seen the pilot including him although the showrunners often use the clip to blackmail him.
"They say, if I ever piss them off too much, they'll release it on YouTube," Harington said. "Every now and then, they send me a screengrab, just as a threat."
"Game of Thrones" is set to return for its eighth and final season next year which, according to Harington, is just at the right time, especially in reflection of what made its beginnings so special. "I wouldn't have wanted to go on for another year, but if it had finished last year, it wouldn't have felt long enough," he said.
