Kit Harington’s most controversial comments, after his casting in HBO’S Harry Potter

Kit Harington joining HBO’s Harry Potter was always going to be a slightly controversial casting choice.

The series is already surrounded by controversy because of J.K. Rowling’s continued involvement and her widely criticised views on transgender people. So naturally, fans have been looking pretty closely at the people choosing to sign up to the reboot.

Via James Veysey/Shutterstock

And, well, Kit Harington has given people quite a lot to work with over the years.

The Game of Thrones star, who is replacing Nicholas Hoult as Gilderoy Lockhart in season two, has made a number of eyebrow-raising comments throughout his career, from his views on sexism and gender to a rather questionable comparison involving Israel and Palestine.

He called the Game of Thrones finale petition “idiocy”

Earlier this year, Harington spoke about the enormous backlash to the final season of Game of Thrones, including the petition calling for season eight to be remade with “competent writers”.

Around two million people signed the petition, but Harington said he was furious when he saw it.

Via HBO

“That genuinely angered me,” he told The New York Times. “Like, how dare you? Sorry, that’s just how I feel.”

He then went even further, describing the petition as “a level of idiocy that can only come about through social media”.

The comments inevitably caused a stir among fans who had spent years complaining about how the show wrapped up.

He once said there was “sexism” against men in Hollywood

Back in 2016, Harington sparked backlash after speaking about how he felt objectified because of his appearance.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, he said: “I think there is a double standard. If you said to a girl, ‘Do you like being called a babe?’ and she said, ‘No, not really,’ she’d be absolutely right.”

He continued: “I like to think of myself as more than a head of hair or a set of looks. It’s demeaning.”

Harington then argued: “There’s a sexism that happens towards men. There’s definitely a sexism in our industry that happens towards women, and there is towards men as well.”

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The comments were criticised because they appeared to put his experiences as a male actor on the same level as the systemic sexism women in the industry face.

He described his childhood as “very gender fluid”

Via HBO

In a 2020 interview with The Telehraph, Harington also spoke about the way his mother raised him, explaining that she didn’t force stereotypical gender roles onto him.

He said: “I asked for a Mighty Max and she bought me a Polly Pocket. I asked for an Action Man and I got a doll – it was very gender fluid from the word go. And I went with it.”

Harington also spoke about masculinity and the emotional repression he associated with traditional ideas of being a man.

“I feel that emotionally men have a problem, a blockage, and that blockage has come from the Second World War, passed down from grandfather to father to son,” he said.

“We do not speak about how we feel because it shows weakness, because it is not masculine.”

Those comments have inevitably resurfaced alongside his Harry Potter casting, particularly because J.K. Rowling has become a highly controversial figure over her views on gender and transgender rights. Rowling remains an executive producer on the HBO adaptation.

He compared the Israel-Palestine conflict to Game of Thrones

And then there’s a particularly eyebrow-raising Game of Thrones interview with Vulture from 2015.

While discussing Jon Snow allowing the Wildlings through the Wall, Harington compared the fictional conflict between the Wildlings and the Night’s Watch to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

“If you let a whole bunch of f**king wildlings through your gates, it’s like Israel letting through a whole bunch of Palestinians, or Palestine letting through the Israelis,” he said.

He described the groups as “two warring factions who hate each other”, adding that this would inevitably create dissent which would eventually reach “its fiercest form, with the final blow”.

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Featured image via James Veysey/Shutterstock