‘Game of Thrones’ Season 3: Kit Harington, Rose Leslie and John Bradley talk archery, love interests and ‘You know nothing, Jon Snow’

Jon Snow might prepared to face off against the King Beyond The Wall, Mance Rayder, in Season 3 of “Game of Thrones,” but there’s one element of his plan to infiltrate the Wildlings that he’s not ready for: the red-headed warrior Ygritte. Series stars Kit Harington and Rose Leslie got to show off their wonderful chemistry on screen at the end of Season 2, and that will be something fans get to continue to see in the next 10 episodes of Season 3.

But Jon wasn’t the only Night’s Watch member to have a taste of romance in 2012. John Bradley’s Samwell Tarly met a girl north of the Wall named Gilly, and though they parted by the end of Season 2, we can tell you with much confidence that they will meet again this year. Zap2it participated in a roundtable discussion with Harington, Rose and Bradley where we talked about their onscreen romances, Ygritte’s famous line, “You know nothing, Jon Snow,” and some other teases of the upcoming “Game of Thrones” season. Here are some highlights:

On what’s coming up in Season 3…

Harington: “Jon is playing a spy, essentially, and is trying to find out where his loyalties lie. That becomes more blurred as we go on because we don’t know whether he’s going to stray to the Wildlings because actually he made a stupid decision when he was young about taking this vow and was it a bad call. And so that’s the story for Jon this season is finding out where his heart lies.”

Leslie: “For Ygritte I feel that this season we get an insight into her kind of toughness and her brutality and that all breaking down and seeing a softer side of her. The relationship between herself and Jon Snow, that’s continuing and developing throughout.”

Bradley: “I think that this is the season where Sam, certain events have happened to Sam and certain events have already happened where he’s tired of being kicked around and affected by the world. This is the season where he wants to start affecting things and being active instead of being passively smashed about by fate and by bad luck and by people who don’t appreciate for him for who he is. I think this is the season where he decides to take control of his life a little bit.”

On what Bradley hopes could potentially happen between Sam and Gilly [minor spoilers for fans who haven’t read the books]…

Bradley: “I just hope that they can raise a functional child. [laughs] I think that there’s so many dysfunctional relationships in families. That’s kind of what this show is based on. In fact, the more I think about it, that’s entirely what this show is based on: dysfunctional family relationships. It really is, isn’t it.

“I just think that a genuine loving relationship between families are quite hard to come across in this. I just think it would be so sweet for [Gilly and Sam] to raise this child as best they can. I mean, it’s a simple thing. Sam doesn’t want the throne and Sam doesn’t want to become king of Westeros, he just wants a little bit of love and a bit of happiness in his life, and nobody can deny him that surely.”

On Leslie being good at archery — very good…

Leslie: “Oh yeah, I’m good. I am, thank you very much. Can you ask Kit to tell the story? Can Kit tell you this story? He loves this story.”

Harington: “So Rose is doing her practice for the bow and arrow –“

Leslie: “First time ever.”

Harington: “First time ever, and she notched the arrow, she got it in a bullseye, whatever. And then she got another one, split it down the middle, and that is such a good story.”

On this being the season for Samwell Tarly…

Bradley: “I think that through Sam’s buckishness and his curiosity about the world, working with Maester Aemon in the library and absorbing so much knowledge, I think that that’s been quite academic up till now and he’s stored it all in there. But I think his knowledge of certain minerals and certain objects and what they can do comes into great practical use this year very dramatically for the good of everybody.

“I think that Jon has shown to Sam just how much one person can change another person’s life. Jon changed Sam’s life so dramatically in the space of one episode from being paralyzed by fear to having a best friend, and I think he now knows that there are certain people in the world who need him just as much if not more as Sam needed Jon. I think he now knows the power of bravery and personality and how much that can save somebody’s life.”

On shooting in Iceland…

Leslie: “I always found it quite tricky shooting on location because you’re kind of like shooting through the snow. I mean, it’s deep. It’s several inches, but I think that definitely informs your body language and the way that you walk, but also there’s that element of, ‘Well this is [Ygritte’s] territory. This is her home, she can handle whatever it throws at her.’ So there was that element of trying to pull it off slickly and rather smoothly and not kind of like falling over a**-over-tit in the snow. But yeah, I’ve said it so many times, it was just fabulous to be able to actually go back there in the first place. But you [Harington] had a little bit of trickiness because of your ankle troubling you.” [Writer’s note: Harington broke his ankle in July 2012 while Season 3 was in production.]

Harington: “Yeah, by the time we’d gotten to Iceland the ankle was a lot better but yeah, there was nothing quite like it than two foot snow to walk through.”

Bradley: “It was traumatic for me because that whole first sequence [in the Season 3 premiere], the pre-credits sequence, that was shot on one day and it was just a day of running. A day of running through five foot snow and it was really exhausting. I got to the end of it — we can only shoot for like six hours in Iceland because of the light — I got to the end of six hours and I was exhausted and I thought, ‘Sam’s been running for about 12. Sam‘s theoretically fitter than me.’ That was a bad moment.”

On “You know nothing, Jon Snow”…

Leslie: “Reading the books, that was when I first kind of hit upon the fact that yeah, this is, this is — we were talking about it last night — about this being a catchphrase, which kind of doesn’t give it a nice ring to it. But [showrunners] David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] are geniuses and they pepper it very, very intelligently so it doesn’t becoming nagging, it doesn’t become irritating to hear the whole time — I like to think, but I think Kit has a different approach on that. But yeah, it was reading the books, that was when I got an insight into just how loved that kind of catchphrase is.”

Harington: “It’s always funny when you’re with a friend who hasn’t seen the show and someone on the street comes up to you and goes, ‘You know nothing, you bastard.’ My friends, they’re going, ‘You’re going to settle for that?’ And I’m there going [pretends to shake someone’s hand], ‘Thank you very much.'”

In regards to a waitress saying the line to Leslie while she was at lunch…

Leslie: “Oh, that was really, really awful and a bit kind of stressful eight minutes of my life. I was having lunch with a girlfriend back at home and this waitress came over, lovely lady, she came over and I was mulling over what I what I wanted to eat. Just by the by, I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know what I want,’ and she goes, ‘You know nothing… Jon Snow.’ And I was like, ‘Ha ha ha,’ and we all sort of laughed it off and chuckled, and then she asked me to do it. I don’t know, it was being put on the spot like that I kind of got all clammy and everything.

“I then said, ‘You know nothing, Jon Snow,’ but I said it in my accent and her face fell. She was gutted. She was absolutely gutted, and she didn’t even try and kind of cover it up, and she genuinely looked me in the eye and was like, ‘That’s not it. That’s not it.’ And me being the kind of fool that I am, I was just like, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, let me do it again for you,’ and then put on the accent and said it in the northern dialect. She just kind of walked off and I was like, oh my god, that was the most stressful thing, and then it was awful, it kind of ruined the lunch. Myself and my friend, we didn’t really speak about anything else other than how rude she was.”

Photo/Video credit: Getty Images