In an age where we are too busy to stop and read a post longer than 140 characters (Twitter) I want to tell you the story of how I was so close to meet Kit Harrington.
This will be a long post. Please don’t read it if you don’t have time or you don’t want to find out what happened. In the end, I did not meet the man, so why should you bother?
Here we go. Hang in there.
I am an Eastern European immigrant that moved to UK in 2011. Since then I wasted my life working as a locum pharmacist (good money!).
Last year (in 2016) I was so into Game of Thrones (the TV series, I haven’t read the books [yet], sorry) that I asked myself: “Why don’t I take part in the show? Who’s keeping me? (Other than family, job, money, never been in a movie before, never acted in my life, and so on.)
So, I did some research to find out which company is supplying extras and other auxiliary staff for Game of Thrones. And I found out that it was an Irish based company. I’ve tried to apply online, but when I had to choose the country I was living in, on the application form I only had two options: Northern Ireland or Rep. of Ireland. At that time I was living in England, so I couldn’t register. But that didn’t put me off. I though, “this is ridiculous and unfair; I can’t even register because my address is on the other side of the Irish Sea”. So, I’ve emailed them. And they replied saying:
“It’s simply down to the logistics of a film shoot; schedules change massively so hiring locally sourced people or people who are within driving distance and aren’t reliant on a plane or a boat can cater to that changing schedule far more easily.”
Basically they said not to take it personally, it was “down to logistic”. Fair enough.
After receiving that email I thought “I could move to Ireland for a while, I’ve got some friends there, so it might work out”. But then my little boy was born so I had to reconsider.
After the seed was planted, another question popped into my head: “do I want to be in Game of Thrones for the sake of it, or do I want to be part of the movie industry?” So, I’ve registered with an agency in the UK and after many tries I’ve got my first part as an extra in a TV mini-series (I’ll talk more about that experience in a future post).
This TV mini-series is called Gunpowder and of course I had no clue what was that all about. On my slip it was written “Role – King’s servant”, so I though “this must be good, quite important”. But when I got to the set, the lady told me that I was to be a King’s Guard, and I thought “this is even better”, but it wasn’t. The difference was that servants filmed with the King all day long, while the guards appeared in one scene for 3 seconds, in a dark corner of the room and out of focus.
Oh, yeah, and while I was waiting to take part in the action, I’ve found out that Kit Harington is staring in the production (must have been an honour for him to play in the same movie as me).
And, no, I’ve never met him or seen him on the set or anywhere else.
Gunpowder is set to begin on Saturday 21 October (2017) on BBC One. Keep your eyes peeled and you might spot me somewhere in a dark corner.
