Kit Harington has opened up about the secret he's been keeping from all of his friends and castmates since his character Jon Snow was killed off at the end of the fifth season of Game of Thrones.
Credit: HBO
Speaking to EW in a new interview, he explained: "At first I thought I would find it fun, this will be a fun game. But I had to lie to a lot of close friends and cast members and crew. The longer it went, the more I felt like I was betraying them. So I did end up letting people in, slowly."
The actor is of course talking about the resurrection of his character, which occured in the latest episode of season 6 following a spell from Melisandre - something he's had to keep secret for quite some time after being told by showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss just two weeks after the season 5 scripts were delivered in the summer of 2014.
He also told EW of how fellow actor Sophie Turner, who plays Sansa Stark, totally bought into the story and thought his time on the series was over.
"Sophie Turner, bless her, wrote me a really long letter about how much she loved working with me - and I [have] still got it. That made me chuckle," he laughed. But he did note that, by the time the scripts had gone out for season 6 last summer, the cast had figured out he was making a return, despite the use of a codename in the scripts.
Harington also used the interview opportunity to apologise to fans: "I'd like to say sorry for lying to everyone. I'm glad that people were upset that he died. I think my biggest fear was that people were not going to care. Or it would just be, 'Fine, Jon Snow's dead.' But it seems like people had a, similar to the Red Wedding episode, kind of grief about it. Which means something I'm doing - or the show is doing - is right."
Game of Thrones continues Sundays on HBO in the US, and Mondays on Sky Atlantic in the UK.
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