The Jon Snow actor revealed that while shooting season seven of the HBO drama, he became frustrated with efforts to discover what was going on on set. "I think we all got very upset and angry that people want to spoil a TV show in that way for people," Harington said to ET.
He also revealed his annoyance at paparazzi breaking onto the Westeros shoots with drones or hidden cameras: "There's only so much you can do when you're filming in these beautiful locations and you can't shut places off. You just have to deal with these, frankly, a***holes who wanna spoil it for people.”
Harington added, “I'm so protective over this show now. I'm so fond of it and as it gets towards the end, and all these exciting things happen, which I want to be shocking for people, it really infuriates me when I see someone ruining that [for] people."
So, what protective measures did the show rally to combat spoilers? Thrones created Fake News. In an interview on the Jimmy Kimmel show, Harington claimed they had filmed three unplotted scenes to deliberately put fans off the scent.
“What I can say about this season is we had a lot of paparazzi following us around, especially when we were in Spain, but we did fake some scenes,” he explained. “We put together people in situations where we knew the paparazzi were around so they’d take photos and they’d get on the internet.”
It sounds as if Thrones pushed out the whole Iron Fleet for these phoney shoots, with each taking five hours. But which scenes were real and which were fake? Unsurprisingly Harington stayed tight-lipped, not wanting to give away what scenes were actually real.
So, could some anticipated reunions in the next season actually be red herrings? Can you trust anything you read on Watchers on the Wall? Or was Harington’s statement itself there to throw Thrones fans off the truth?
We simply can’t be sure. Well played Snow, this time it’s the fans that truly know nothing.
Game of Thrones Season 7 premieres exclusively on 17th July on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV at 2am, repeated at 9pm on the same day
