Kit Harington: This Season of GoT Has Been One Big Heartbreak 

, which is currently nearing the end of its fourth season, Kit Harington found time to get acquainted with another fire breather in

How to Train Your Dragon 2, which hits theaters Friday. We met up with the 27-year-old actor at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills to discuss why he’s so drawn to fantastical narratives about mythical creatures. Plus, the actor gave ELLE the inside scoop on Sunday\'s tumultuous and emotional episode of

Are you only allowed do projects that involve dragons?

Oh no, that’s just where my career has taken me. And I’m quite happy to do it. This was completely different from anything I’ve ever done with dragons before. But yeah it’s just me and dragons again. Although if you think about it I’ve never encountered an actual dragon in any fictional situations except this one.

Without being flippant, why not? It’s just such a wonderful medium to work in. Everyone I’ve met who’s done it actor-wise has said how liberating and wonderful it is to do. I actually thought it might inform me on my acting in other places. It’s quite theatrical and I haven’t done theater in a while. Maybe I could go a bit bigger with my performance.

I did. I trained in theater. And I started in theater with my first two jobs doing stage plays. Since then I’ve been living in the world of film and TV, which can be quite restrictive and boxed. And this is not boxed. This is very vocally free. It’s nice to work vocally without a hundred different eyes on you like you do in film work. It’s much more intimate. It’s much smaller and more focused than film and TV.

episode was pretty insane. What was it like shooting that huge battle scene?

It was pretty incredible. We were filming it for about a month, on and off. It was a two-week intensive period, but the whole thing was about a month. For

that’s pretty unheard of. We all grew very close doing it. There were about ten of us there and that’s very condensed for

Was it difficult to shoot the scene where Ygritte dies in Jon Snow’s arms?

That was very emotional. Me and Rose [Leslie] have worked together quite intensively for three years now. We always knew that was coming. We knew that was in the books. We just didn’t know how it would happen. We got the scripts though and the dialogue was beautiful. The way it happened was perfect, in my opinion. The little boy who Jon has trained up and mentored kills her. He’s seen her kill his family. So he knows he’s doing the right thing. And he’s saving my life. And yet it’s a horrible triangle because Jon has to deal with the person he’s trained killing the only person he’s ever loved. And had Olly not shot the arrow, Jon would have done nothing. There’s a moment where he smiles and it’s a moment of satisfaction of seeing her. It’s a beautiful scene.

I don’t think she would have shot that arrow.

Jon hadn’t seen her all season until that moment, right?

No. The hard thing for me with this season – and I wrote to the writers about it early on – is that I wanted the audience to know he’s been missing her. In the books he thinks about her constantly. It’s there, written down, that he’s thinking about Ygritte. In this he doesn’t mention her once until the very beginning of this episode. The real challenge for me this season was showing the audience that he loves her without saying anything or talking about it. Which is kind of impossible, showing the audience the inner-workings of your head. So I had to find moments of that happening and I hope I did.

The battle ends at the end of episode nine. The beginning of ten carries on with the story. Jon is focused on being a leader. He’s a much colder person after this. He loses a lot of whatever warmth he had, which, let’s face it, wasn’t a lot. There’s a lot of lessons he’s learned in this last episode about doing what you need to do to survive and surviving past losing your love is one of those things. At the beginning of episode ten you see a very broken man.

It is sad. He’s been going through heartbreak the entire season. Whether you’ve seen it or not, he’s been going through it. It all ends the only way it could end and the way he probably knew it would end. He’s not naïve. He knew there was the possibility of seeing her die or her seeing him die at the battle. You know that thing when you break up with someone and you’re walking around the town where you both live and you’re just really hoping to see them? You know that you’re not supposed to see them, but there’s nothing you want more.

season five. And then I don’t know until next year, really. This is where I start looking for projects for next year. But I might take a break. I really might take a break.

So we know Jon Snow survives the finale episode if you’re headed to shoot next season.

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