He may be best known as Jon Snow on HBO’s hit “Game of Thrones,” but Kit Harington has been branching out into movies in the past few years with a lot of interesting choices, including his latest, Testament of Youth, an adaptation of Vera Brittain’s 1933 memoir about how her life was affected by World War I. In the film, Brittain is portrayed by Swedish actress Alicia Vikander, who recently made waves for her performance in Ex Machina.
Harington plays Roland Leighton, Vera’s childhood friend and later her lover, a poet who inspires her first to go to Oxford and then to go the frontlines as a nurse as Roland and her brother (Taran Egerton) suffer the ravages of fighting in that horrible war.
ComingSoon.net sat down with Harington for the video interview below in which we talked about the influence of Brittain’s work over the decades since the novel’s release, Roland’s role in Brittain’s story, as well as what he’d like Americans who may not know Brittain’s work to get out of the film. We also talked with Harington about how Jon Snow‘s story has been progressing on “Game of Thrones” and whether he read ahead, and though he may have just been trying to be coy, he refused to tell us whether he was going to be back with the rest of the cast in July to start shooting the show’s sixth season.
Testament of Youth opens in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, June 5.