Kit Harington, Carice van Houten & Jeremy Podeswa on the making of Jon Snow’s resurrection

The resurrection of Jon Snow is the focus of Entertainment Weekly‘s cover story this week, and the magazine is doling out tidbits from the story every day on the website. Here are some of the highlights, focusing on Kit Harington’s luscious locks (#Never4GetHairWatch), Melisandre’s careful cleansing of Jon’s corpse, and Harington’s attempts to say goodbye to his cast members after season 5.

Fans kept an eye on Kit’s long hair throughout the fall as filming resumed for Game of Thrones season 6. The actor was spotted several times with his usual lengthy, curly hair (peruse our Kit Harington tag), and was even photographed on set in costume with a bun.

Apparently, the actor did cut his hair…a little. Not that anyone noticed. He tells Entertainment Weekly, “We cut it much shorter for this season, and do a different hairstyle this season and put it up in a bun.” Harington explains:

I wanted to sell [the story that he was leaving the series] a bit more […] I know this hairstyle this hair cut is very synonymous with the show. I know in the past I’d said I’d cut it off when I can. I wanted to appear with shorter hair straight away so it would sell the lie.

Yeah, that didn’t work so much. Sorry, Kit!

Also a mixed bag for him in terms of success was convincing his own co-stars that Jon Snow had been well and truly killed off for good. Harington said his farewells to other Game of Thrones stars, but not all of them bought it.

According to Harington, Liam Cunningham “told me to f— off from the start.”

Sophie Turner was more easily convinced. “Sophie Turner, bless her, wrote me a really long letter about how much she loved working with me – and I still got it,” Harington tells EW. “That made me chuckle.”

The show’s red priestess, Carice van Houten, recalls shooting the resurrection scene with EW in the new story, as well.

“It took forever to resurrect him, forever!” van Houten tells EW. “It was such an important scene, we shot it from so many angles. I think I washed his body 50 times. There would be a lot of people who would be very jealous, including my mother and sister. I was joking about that with him – ‘if only my mother could see this’ – and he loved that.”

Van Houten is another cast member who wasn’t sure of Jon Snow’s fate after season 5.

“I had thought for a long time he was just going to die,” she explains. “Then we got wind he was probably going to come back but nobody was sure about it. It’s funny because on Twitter when he died a lot of people who wanted to kill me in episode 9 came back and said, ‘We’ll forgive you if you resurrect Jon Snow.’”

I don’t know if everyone forgives Melisandre altogether,  but they certainly are happier with her now!

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One of the men behind the major scene, director Jeremy Podeswa, speaks to the Hollywood Reporter this week about his role in bringing Jon Snow back to life.

As for what his biggest challenge was in making the moment, the director says:

I think just establishing the right amount of tension through the scene, so you really didn’t know up until the last second which way it was going to go. That was the biggest thing, creating a sense of mystery and magic around the whole thing. We really wanted that scene to be very beautiful, but also fraught with tension. That’s the main thing we were looking for.

For those who noted artistic references in the staging of the scene, well spotted! Podeswa explains their influences:

We were basing a lot of the visuals on Rembrandt paintings, specifically The Anatomy Lesson. It had a very rich, textual, moody, atmospheric quality. I think we were all in that space for a long time for this scene — while we were shooting all the scenes involving Jon Snow’s body, really, but particularly the one where he’s resurrected.

When asked about Ghost turning his attention to Jon right before he wakes up, Podeswa declines to give more information, but says, “I would say if you keep watching, all will be revealed.”

There’s more interesting info from the director so check out the complete interview at the Hollywood Reporter!

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