Game of Thrones star Kit Harington reveals how difficult it was to shoot that 'Hardhome' battle scene

(Image credit: Helen Sloan/courtesy of HBO)

last updated 1 June 2015

Last night's Game of Thrones featured the show's most brutal and impressive battle scene yet — a brutal massacre at the northern outpost 'Hardhome,' as members of the wildlings and the Night's Watch were slaughtered during a surprise attack from the White Walkers, leading an army of reanimated corpses.

The visual effects-heavy sequence left a huge impression — but in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, star Kit Harington (Jon Snow) revealed that achieving the scene wasn't easy. "It was three to four weeks of shooting for a sequence that should add up to [more than] 20 minutes," he said. "We shot less than a minute a day!"

Harington went on to explain the enormous difficulty of filming a scene in which he fights against skeletal corpses and pale, blue-eyed White Walkers. "Every fight I would shoot three times," he said. "First against a man in a [greenscreen-projectable suit], the second with man who’s not in a green suit, but has full-on makeup to look like a dead person, and the third time I would just fight [without an opponent, striking open air]. It gave them the option of using whichever way looked the best."

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Scott Meslow is the entertainment editor for TheWeek.com. He has written about film and television at publications including The Atlantic, POLITICO Magazine, and Vulture.

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