Kit Harington - 'I'm More Than Just My Arse'

Kit Harington - 'I'm More Than Just My Arse'

We’ve watched his character Jon Snow get caught up in the never-ending battle between fire and ice on the hit series Game Of Thrones, but Kit Harington finds himself playing with, er, Gunpowder in his new political drama.

The three-part drama centres around Guy Fawkes’s failed Gunpowder Plot in London in 1605. Not up to scratch with your history? Let’s get you up to speed! The religious rebel and his 12 co-conspirators spent months planning to assassinate King James I of England during the opening of Parliament in order to restore a Catholic monarch to the throne. Heavy, right?

But making things more intense is the fact that Kit – who not only stars in the story, but co-created and produced it too – is related to two of the people involved in the plot.

“When we were researching, we did read that a certain Lord Harington on my father’s side was in the House of Parliament when [Robert] Catesby [who was Guy’s co-conspirator] was trying to blow it up,” says Kit, whose full name is Christopher Catesby Harington. “And when Catesby’s head was marched by after he’d been caught and decapitated, Harington is quoted as saying, ‘He’s an ugly fellow, isn’t he?’