The dust may be settling from the explosive season finale of Game of Thrones, but GoT fans aren’t the only ones feeling the after-effects of the decade-long show, as it’s emerged that one of the show’s biggest stars, Kit Harington, has checked into a wellness retreat to work on some ‘personal issues’.
The 32-year-old actor, who played heartthrob Jon Snow in the hit series, reportedly entered a month-long retreat several weeks before the season finale on May 19 for professional treatment.
A representative for Harington said in a statement: “Kit has decided to utilize this break in his schedule as an opportunity to spend some time at a wellness retreat to work on some personal issues.”
According to The New York Post‘s column Page Six, who reported that Harington is being treated for stress, exhaustion and alcohol use at the Prive-Swiss retreat in Connecticut, Kit has “nothing but pride for his decision.”
“If seeing Kit get help can help anyone struggling, that’s fantastic. There’s no shame at all to this,” the source began.
“Everyone close to him really wanted him to get some rest. Right now, he just needs peace and quiet.”
It’s not the first time Harington has opened up about his personal struggles with fame. In a recent interview with Esquire earlier in April, the actor recalled getting emotional when shooting his final scenes as Jon Snow.
“The final day of shooting, I felt fine . . . I felt fine . . . I felt fine. . . Then I went to do my last shots and started hyperventilating a bit. Then they called, “Wrap!” And I just f—ing broke down. It was this onslaught of relief and grief about not being able to do this again.”
In a separate interview with Variety, Harington also explored the pressures of appearing on the show for an eight-year run.
“You have these in-jokes, and these relationships that thrive for eight years,” he explained. “That’s a long time for those jokes to be going, and they never felt old or tired.
“In the last season, I was like, these are getting tired now. And I think they got tired because we could see the end coming. That’s a way of emotionally detaching from something: relationships very slightly starting to strain, just on the edges, just frayed.”
In a recent documentary about the making of the eighth and final season which aired on Sunday, Harington was shown getting tearful during the final read-through as he learns that he will kill his lover Daenerys Targaryen.
Our thoughts are with Kit and his loved ones, and we hope he gets the help he needs.
