Jon Snow has taken some pretty gnarly hits in the past and turns out, the actor who plays him is no stranger to being in a fight.
In 2010, Kit Harington showed up to the audition of a lifetime for HBO's "Game of Thrones" with a shiner.
At the time, Harington was virtually unknown in Hollywood. The London-born actor racked up some impressive credits on his theater résumé, including the lead in the original stage production of "War Horse."
"Game of Thrones" showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were impressed by Harington's "War Horse" performance reviews and invited him to come in and read a scene — a conversation between Jon Snow and Tyrion Lannister from the pilot.
But something was awry.
"I had a black eye as I'd been in a scrap," Harington told The Daily Mail Online's Craig Mclean. "But I think it might have helped. You know, 'Who's the kid with the black eye?'"
It must have worked. In an interview with Rolling Stone's Stephen Rodrick, Weiss said he remembered thinking, "This is what Jon Snow looks like," and whispering to Benioff, "Please let this kid be good."
More striking than his black eye was Harington's quiet intensity.
"It wasn't a studied thing — some kind of actor who practices brooding in the mirror," Benioff says. "It was a capacity to say a lot without saying a lot."
Jon Snow will likely need to do a lot more talking now that he's rallying the houses of the North to take back Winterfell. That's going to be one heck of a "scrap" to watch, too.
