Kit Shared How He Really Feels About That GoT Joke In His Modern Love Episode

Kit Harington is still Jon Snow to so many people. Even though Game of Thrones has been over since May 2019, that doesn’t mean the actor has fully escaped Westeros. In fact, the actor’s latest project included a meta joke about the hit fantasy series, but it didn’t weird him out. ICYMI, Kit Harington is a fan of Modern Love’s Game of Thrones joke, and it was one of the reasons he signed on for the episode.

Harington’s episode of Modern Love, which aired on Friday, Aug. 13, was titled "Strangers on a (Dublin) Train." The anthology series put Harington’s character Michael on a train, where he meets a medievalist named Paula (played by Lucy Boynton). In the episode, he ends up telling his bro Declan (Jack Reynor) about the chance meet-cute, and that’s where the glorious joke comes in. Asking about what she’s into, Declan says, "OK. So, like Game of Thrones and stuff?" Michael was not a fan of the reference, but Harington himself says he actually loved the joke.

"That was in the script," Harington told E! News, after being asked if Reynor improvised the line. "It's one of the main reasons I did the piece. You know, I read that, and I pissed myself laughing,” he said. According to Harington, the showrunner, John Carney, offered to cut the line if he didn’t like it. "He said, 'We could lose that if you want,'" Harington admitted.

“I said, ‘No!’...What I like about that moment, without giving too much away about the joke, is that you get the feeling that Michael the character has never seen the show, but it could also work on a level of, like, me the actor going, ‘Don't even go there,’” Harington remarked.

Although the joke was a major selling point for the actor, he also says he was grateful that the episode dealt with the ongoing pandemic — as none of the other ones do.

ICYMI, the episode shows Harington and Boynton’s characters planning to meet up on the train again in two weeks instead of exchanging numbers. Then, however, the coronavirus pandemic begins, and they’re faced with a hiccup in their budding relationship.

“Deep down, it's about the choices we all had to make, selfish or otherwise, during the pandemic and where we lay on that moral line,” Harington said. “But, at the heart of it, it's a really beautiful, fun, funny piece about that period of time.”

The episode of Modern Love also was a first for Hartington because he’d never done an Irish accent before. “I said to John, like, 'I'm gonna try this, and I really hope it works, with the backup of, if it doesn't, let me be British somehow,’” he recalled. “And I worked on it with a dialect coach. The worst thing is trying to fudge an accent, you know?”

Modern Love Season 2 is streaming on Amazon Prime Video, so if you have marathoned it yet, you probably should — at least to catch that GoT joke.