Kit Harington says critics of Game of Thrones can, and I quote, “go fuck themselves.”
To that I reply, from a place of genuine fondness and support: Log off! Delete Twitter from your phone! Cancel your Google alerts! Throw your laptop in a lake! Do not read the comments!!!
“How I feel about the show right now is quite defiant. I think no matter what anyone thinks about this season—and I don’t mean to sound mean about critics here—but whatever critic spends half an hour writing about this season and makes their [negative] judgement on it, in my head they can go fuck themselves. ’Cause I know how much work was put into this. I know how much people cared about this. I know how much pressure people put on themselves and I know how many sleepless nights working or otherwise people had on this show. Because they cared about it so much. Because they cared about the characters. Because they cared about the story. Because they cared about not letting people down.”
He added:
“Now if people feel let down by it, I don’t give a fuck—because everyone tried their hardest. That’s how I feel. In the end, no one’s bigger fans of the show than we are, and we’re kind of doing it for ourselves. That’s all we could do, really. And I was just happy we got to the end.”
Despite the fact that when I first read A Game of Thrones roughly, uh, Jesus, 20 years ago, I pictured Jon Snow as looking more like sort of a younger, thinner-faced, marginally more emo Tobias Menzies, I’ve come around to Harington, between his fond clowning of his own character and his long-ago McDonald’s fist-fighting.
And I get it, Kit! You’re feeling very emotional, generally. Everyone was under a lot of pressure to properly end the defining television show of the era. This is the job that made you famous. You’ve been working there for a decade. You met your wife there! I assure you, I too have spent plenty of time reading public judgements of my workplace! And so it is with the authority of experience I say, ask Rose to make a new WiFi password and keep it a secret for the next six to nine months. Trust me.