Kit Harington recalls young ‘Game of Thrones’ costar Bella Ramsey mouthing his lines to him

Kit Harington and Bella Ramsey are reminiscing about working on Game of Thrones together — and recalling how one of them helped the other remember their lines.

In a recent conversation for Interview, Ramsay told Harington their earliest memories of playing Lyanna Mormont opposite his Jon Snow in season 6 of the HBO fantasy series. 

“I don’t know whether you remember this, but I remember it quite vividly and have some remorse for it now, but during that scene I was mouthing your lines to you,” the Last of Us star said. “Now I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, how awful.’ But at the time it came from a very innocent place of being like, ‘Kit’s struggling with his line and I know it, so let me just mouth it to him.'”

Harington then shared his side of the story. “I do remember you helping me out and it being quite humiliating,” he recalled. “But yeah, thanks for that. I’ve probably chosen to forget it.”

Ramsey said they now regret the move. “You’re welcome. No, I think I need to forget it, because that’s so annoying,” they said. “Like, how annoying is that?”

Harington reassured his former costar: “It wasn’t at all. If anything I was like, ‘Oh god, I’ve got to up my game. I came here not really being comfortable enough with my lines, in the arrogance of however old I was, thinking I’m just opposite some child. And then that child actor is wiping me off the screen.’ Not that it’s a competition, but you’re like, ‘Oh, I’ve got a bit too comfortable in my Jon Snow-ness.'”

Ramsey also shared their first impression of acting on Game of Thrones. “I would’ve been 11 when we first met,” they said. “It was my first job ever, so I had no reference point for what it would be like. I weirdly wasn’t nervous at all, because I never knew that I wanted to be an actor, so I didn’t have a bunch of expectations. I was coming into it very much blind.”

Harington was immediately impressed by Ramsey’s natural abilities. “I’m going to blow a bit of smoke here, so I’m sorry, but there was a real feeling of you being a different entity of child actor. We were like, ‘Oh, they’re good,'” he remembered. “You brought a confidence and clarity that was quite unusual for a young actor. It didn’t feel like working with a child. It felt like working with a very experienced actor.”

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The Catherine Called Birdy actor echoed Harington’s evaluation of their own ageless demeanor. “I remember not feeling like a child, but now I see 11-year-olds and realize how tiny they are, so it’s weird to me that I was that size and that young, because I didn’t feel that tiny,” Ramsey explained.

Ramsey told Entertainment Weekly about how the Game of Thrones experience paved the way for The Last of Us in 2023. “I don’t think that I’d be an actor if it wasn’t for Game of Thrones, ’cause I never really set out to be [one], and then it sort of happened,” they said at the time. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. So it set me up and prepared me for The Last of Us, and all my other projects, in ways that I don’t think anything else could.”