Was your heart racing when Jon Snow finally met Daenerys Stormborn in last week's Game of Thrones episode? I know, it was a lot — seven seasons' worth of buildup, to be exact. Their meeting did not disappoint: the rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms and the King in the North both held their own in front of each other, despite the apparent interpersonal tension. And it turns out that Kit Harrington and Emilia Clarke, who play Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen respectively, were just as nervous about the meeting as the rest of us.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Clarke jokes that "both of us were going, ‘Ahhh what are you doing on my set!?’" Which makes sense, given that the characters have never existed at the same time and space before. Clarke also notes that Jon and Daenerys both possess enviable hair, and she thought "this is weird! There’s another Hair in town, and I don’t like it!” We believe that the Unburnt was checking out Jon Snow's brooding locks while they were sparring over bending the knee in the Dragonstone throne room.
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One of the more interesting thoughts from Harrington is that because the characters know nothing about each other, "you’ve got to take yourself out of the mindset of the viewer. As far as Jon knows, he’s just meeting this queen he’s heard of and trying to negotiate with her — he’s not meeting Daenerys, who the audience has been watching for so many years. That helps with the surprise of it. He walks into the room and doesn’t expect to see such a beautiful young woman of similar age to him. Any young man’s reaction is going to be, ‘Okay…’ but he puts that aside because he has to." In other words, we realize that Jon Snow is just trying to do his job, regardless of how beautiful he finds Daenerys. These two characters have been shipped since the books were first published in 1996, though in the world of the story, Jon and Daenerys still have no idea how their lives have been intricately intertwined since their births.
Harrington also mentions that Daenerys "arriving at Westeros has changed the game." Jon Snow has to deal with the Mother of Dragons and Cersei on the Iron Throne, while he's trying to convince everyone that the Night King is real. "Jon just wants to watch a box set [of DVDs] with his family at Winterfell and not be bothered." Unfortunately for Jon, he's got a lot more action to come before winter is over.
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