Kit Harington: Certain Politicians Have ‘Tried To Emulate Joffrey,’ Ruined Political Landscape

As the excitement ramps up in advance of the eighth and final season of HBO’s Game of Thrones, actor Kit Harington went on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and riffed on the parallels between the show’s brutal political landscape and that of the modern world.

According to a piece published in The Hollywood Reporter, the actor, who plays the virtuous Jon Snow in the beloved series, exchanged laughs with the late-night host, and quipped that he could see some similarities between the behavior of one of the show’s most reviled characters, the petulant and psychotic boy-king Joffrey Baratheon, and certain modern politicians.

“I got this theory that we kind of screwed the political landscape. I just feel like certain political figures tried to emulate Joffrey, and things went a bit wrong,” Harington told host Colbert as the audience roared with laughter.

“[He’s] got the hair,” Colbert replied.

The release by HBO of the first trailer for the final season has fans licking their chops for more, and proffering all kinds of wild theories about how show-runners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss might wrap up the beloved series. The clip teases an epic final battle that has been looming on the horizon for some time and features Harington looking much more serious as Jon Snow, clearly thinking about the dreaded White Walkers.

“They’re coming,” he says. “Our enemy doesn’t stop, doesn’t tire, doesn’t fear.”

Back on the couch at the Late Show, Harington was characteristically tight-lipped about the upcoming season, which the creators have condensed down to six episodes that will run 90 minutes each rather than the typical 60-plus minutes of each of previous seasons’ episodes. When Harington talked about how difficult it is not to reveal spoilers, he admitted that even as a principal actor on the show, his own theories about where the show was going were often wildly off-base.

“I had theories all along and all of them were wrong,” he said. “I’m quite glad I never told anyone my theories.”

And when Colbert pressed him to at least reveal some of his mistaken theories, Harington looked pained as he said he “can’t even tell lies” because the press and fans will run with whatever he says and it will blow up in the news.

So Colbert decided to offer his own theories on how the legendary show might end, having his crew put a single-shot camera on Harington to see if he might reveal anything from his facial expressions.

The host’s theories included the show cutting to black over the sound of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing,” a la The Sopranos, having the cast say, “The real game was how we made friends along the way,” and one involving Game of Thrones book series author George R. R. Martin.

“Somebody dies in the final scene and we see George R.R. Martin say ‘that’s a great idea’ and he finally finishes his book,” Colbert quipped.

The final season of Game of Thrones debuts on HBO on April 14.