A Game Of Thrones Star Thought The Original Pilot Was A Disaster

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We've all heard tales, throughout the years, of the original "Game of Thrones" pilot and how much it absolutely stunk ... and apparently, Kit Harington, who played assumed Stark bastard Jon Snow in both the botched pilot and the entire series, had a bad feeling about it pretty early on.

In an Esquire profile in the April 2019 issue of GQ (about a month before "Game of Thrones" concluded with its eighth and final season), Harington revealed photos of his time on the "Game of Thrones" set to interviewer Bruce Handy, which apparently included a shot of the original table read for that awful pilot. As Harington showed off a picture of himself and his co-stars Richard Madden and Alfie Allen, who went on to play Robb Stark and Theon Greyjoy, he mused about the pilot that, thankfully, never saw the light of day.

"This picture was taken just after the very first table read of the pilot for 'Game of Thrones' — the pilot that no one saw," Harington mused. "That was a complete disaster that meant the show nearly never got made. What's happened here is that Richard, Alfie, and I all met for the first time at that table read. We were completely fresh off the boat. This was a huge job for us: a pilot for HBO. American TV. That was massive. I remember it was very, very exciting. We left the table read, where we'd just read with Sean Bean [who played Ned Stark, Jon's apparent father who gets dramatically beheaded at the end of season 1]." 

Harington also shared some sweet memories of his other "half-siblings," including Sophie Turner, Maisie Williams, and Isaac Hempstead-Wright, who joined Harington on the series as Sansa, Arya, and Bran Stark (Ned's legitimate children). "We'd met Sophie Turner, Maisie Williams, and Isaac Hempstead-Wright that day, and they were just these tiny, tiny little kids," Harington recalled. "I remember Isaac looked like a puppy — he was just so small — and they came running up and they were very excited. I remember feeling like an adult then, but looking back, I was just a kid."

Showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss confirmed Harington's assessment of the "disastrous" pilot in the book "Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon: Game of Thrones and the Official Untold Story of the Epic Series" by entertainment reporter James Hibberd. There, they admitted that the pilot got bad reviews even from their own family members. "I showed it to my brother-in-law and sister-in-law and just watched their reactions," Benioff shared. "You could tell watching their faces that they were bored. It wasn't anything they said. They were trying to be nice."

"You listen to how sharply the pitch of somebody's voice turns up when they tell you it's good — 'It's good!' How much higher than their average register is the word good? That's a gauge of how f**ked you are," Weiss agreed. "Our good was in dog-whistle territory. There were others who weren't trying to be nice but were actually trying to be helpful." Who is Weiss talking about, specifically? Apparently, Craig Mazin — who went on to create "Chernobyl" and is the showrunner of "The Last of Us," both of which also found a home on HBO — spoke to Weiss directly and said, "You guys have a massive problem." The former vice president of drama at HBO, Gina Balian, agreed in the book: "Their screening was the final confirmation for them that we had problems."

The problems were ... varied in nature, to say the least. First, the scale felt too small, which was definitely related to the fact that "Game of Thrones" had a much smaller budget at the time (you know, before it proved to be a massive success). The dialogue was also an issue, so much so that viewers couldn't figure out what was going on; for example, people who watched that pilot didn't realize that Cersei and Jaime Lannister (Lena Headey and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, respectively) are siblings in the narrative, which is sort of a huge plot point! (It's the whole reason that Jaime shoves Bran Stark out of a window!) Add in some recasting issues — like how Daenerys Targaryen was originally played by Tamzin Merchant, who was then replaced by Emilia Clarke for the final pilot — and it's easy to see that the situation was a total mess.

Obviously, Benioff and Weiss figured out how to retool the pilot, and we ultimately got the one that aired on HBO. As for Kit Harington, he stuck around, the rough initial pilot be damned ... and grew up playing Jon Snow on "Game of Thrones."

In that same Esquire profile, Kit Harington remarked on something about his involvement in "Game of Thrones" that is, without any irony, extremely special. "It's quite unique as an actor to say I was in it the whole way through, from season 1, or even the pilot, through season 8," he remarked. "I think there are only eight of us. I feel privileged to have worked my way through the whole thing."

Harington did stick it out after reshooting that cruddy pilot, and alongside his fellow industry newcomers Sophie Turner, Maisie Williams, and Emilia Clarke (just to name a few), he skyrocketed to fame as Jon Snow, a main focus of the show and, like I mentioned, the assumed Stark bastard thirsty to prove himself. In season 1, Jon uses his status as an unwanted child out of wedlock to commit himself to the Night's Watch, a band of disgraced men who guard the great wall that separates Westeros proper from the dangerous far north. Throughout the rest of the series, Jon has some serious highs and extremely low lows — he fights White Walkers in the far North and manages to destroy at least two with a Valyrian steel sword, putting aside his action in the final push against the undead army in the Battle of Winterfell, but he also gets stabbed by his own men after becoming Lord Commander of the Night's Watch and facing a mutiny over his acceptance of the wildling folk. 

Also, he sleeps with Daenerys, who turns out to be his aunt, which isn't great ... but speaking of that, we eventually found out that Jon Snow isn't a bastard child at all. He's not Ned Stark's illegitimate son — he's Ned's nephew and the son of Ned's sister Lyanna and Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, who lawfully married in secret before his birth. This doesn't end up mattering (because the ending of "Game of Thrones" sort of stinks, no matter what some of my colleagues here at /Film say), but the bottom line is that, throughout his time on the epic series, Harington got to do quite a lot. It's pretty funny that, as a young actor, he was simply facing down a disastrous pilot and wondering if the show would ever take off.

"Game of Thrones" is streaming on Max now.