As much as we enjoy watching them on the big (or small) screen, actors are humans too — people with families and private lives. Kit Harington , who will forever be known as Jon Snow from Game of Thrones , became a father for the first time in 2021.
He recently opened up about fatherhood and how the experience has changed him at the Toronto International Film Festival.
RELATED STORIES
Harington is married to Rose Leslie.
If that name rings a bell, it’s because Leslie played Ygritte — Jon Snow’s love interest — in GoT . The couple got hitched back in 2018 and had their first child in February of 2021.
He sees a connection between his life and his art.
Harington is in Toronto to promote his new film, Baby Ruby .
“I think there’s a real catharsis in this,” he told People magazine . “My baby boy was about 4 months or 5 months old when we filmed this, so I had just come out of the process that these two [characters] find themselves in of early parenthood, so I was literally exploring that in this movie. That was a big reason for wanting to do it.”
Harington has some observations on modern fatherhood.
Most people, Harington included, probably recognize modern fathers as being more involved parents than dads in previous generations. Still, he says that having a kid has given him new insights on what fatherhood truly is.
Sometimes he feels like a bystander.
“We are becoming more involved in child raising and as a modern father, there is a real feeling of being a bystander at times,” he said. “You are not actively involved in the process of growing the child and there can be a real feeling of not knowing what is going on, what emotions are happening, what the mother or your partner is going through.”
Did he love his new baby immediately?
Discussing the work of Bess Wohl, director of Baby Rudy , Harington said he responded to “this feeling of being told you’ll instantly love your child, you’ll instantly love this baby. I knew I was going to care for the baby I had, but I don’t know whether it was instant love.”
Having a baby is a weird experience.
Harington likened it to suddenly having a houseguest, a stranger who you have to look after all night long.
“It was a stranger that had been planted into my house, now I had to look after the stranger, and the stranger was keeping me up all night. It takes time to grow love, to get to know someone,” he said.
He absolutely loves his baby.
“My boy’s 19 months now, so he’s tottering around just naming things, he goes around saying ‘curtain’ or ‘carpet,’ he just likes impressing you with his knowledge. It’s the most astonishing thing, it really is,” he said.
Will his son ever see him as Jon Snow?
It seems inevitable that Harington and Leslie’s child will watch the show that made his parents famous.
“Look, I mean, [our son] can just be thankful that [ Game of Thrones ] happened, because otherwise [he] wouldn’t be there,” he said. “I’ll be like, ‘You don’t like watching it? Well, tough luck.'”
Does his experience ring true?
Celebs are going to have different experiences from the rest of us, but some of Harington’s observations about parenting seem universal. Let us know what it was like during the first few weeks with your baby, and be sure to tell us what you think of this story in the comments.
h/t: People
