Why Kit Harington was excited to play an 'antagonistic dirtbag' in 'Blood for Dust'

Over the course of eight years, the world came to know Kit Harington as Jon Snow, the steadfast hero at the center of Game of Thrones' dark world. Brave and honorable to his core, Snow fought to save his family and the realm from the forces of evil, even rising from the dead to vanquish an evil zombie army.

Five years after the show ended, Harington is now starring in a very different role. In fact, the only thing the characters have in common is that they both thrive in cold weather. In Rod Blackhurst's Blood for Dust, a neo-Western crime thriller set in snowy Montana, Harington plays Ricky, a sociopathic drug-slinging arms dealer sporting a handlebar mustache and gold chain. He stars opposite Scoot McNairy, who plays Cliff, a down-on-his-luck salesman with a checkered past. When Cliff loses his job, his old colleague Ricky pulls him back into the criminal underbelly, selling drugs and guns for a cartel.

"He's sort of a devil-on-the-shoulder character, the antagonist who's with you all the way through," Harington tells Entertainment Weekly of the role. "He's like a good-time guy in a bad world. He doesn't want to have to face reality."

If Ricky sounds like the polar opposite of Jon Snow, that's just how Harington wanted it. "I rarely get the opportunity to play the Rickys of this world, the antagonistic dirtbag types, and I was excited to be presented with that opposite an actor like Scoot," he says. "So that was the kind of pull, and then Rod, the director, had such a clear idea of what he wanted to do and had it so well planned that I just felt very much in safe hands. It felt well put together. And then it's all about growing a big old mustache and adopting a seriously American accent."

While Ricky presented Harington with a unique type of villain to sink his teeth into, playing the bad guy has been appealing to him in the five years since Thrones concluded. "That is seemingly what I've been hunting a bit," Harington concedes. "If I look at the roles I've taken since playing an out-and-out hero in Game of Thrones, I have to admit there seems to be some sort of pushback about playing a hero. I'm not so interested in heroic roles, and if I am, they have to be pretty anti-hero-ish.

"My heart goes out to people playing heroes," he continues. "They're f---ing hard to play and to make interesting. It is more fascinating as an actor, I think, to empathize with someone deeply faulted and wrong, to try and find your way into why they are doing these things. [Playing] a guy who is doing all the right things and is driven by being good, it's harder to do that. And I think people who do it successfully, who play classically heroic roles, are very talented actors. But at the moment, I just find it more interesting looking for the f---ed-up people."

Blood for Dust hits select theaters and digital on April 19.

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