Former ‘Game of Thrones‘ star Kit Harington was at the Toronto International Film Festival this past weekend to promote his new film, Baby Ruby.
The movie, which is about “the tightly scripted world” of a vlogger and influencer who watches her life unravel after giving birth, co-stars Harington as the vlogger’s husband.
While discussing the film at the festival, Harington talked about how the role came at the perfect time for him because he had just welcomed his first baby with his wife, Rose Leslie.
I think there was real catharsis in this. My baby boy was about 4 months or 5 months old when we filmed this, so I had just come out of the process that these two [characters] find themselves in of early parenthood, so I was literally exploring that in this movie. That was a big reason for wanting to do it.
The 35-year-old actor talked about how modern fathers are more involved in their child’s life than previous generations, but there’s still a disconnect.
We are now becoming more involved in child raising and as a modern father, there is a real feeling of being a bystander at times. You are not actively involved in the process of growing the child and there can be a real feeling of not knowing what is going on, what emotions are happening, what the mother or your partner is going through. There was something in Bess [Wohl, the film’s director’s] work that I responded to which was this feeling of being told you’ll instantly love your child, you’ll instantly love this baby.
He explained that while he obviously deeply cared about the baby the moment his wife gave birth, he’s not sure if it was “instant love,” which is something a lot of fathers report.
Harington explains that it took a few weeks to get to know his child, and from that point on, the love grew and grew.
My boy’s 19 months now so he’s tottering around just naming things, he goes around saying ‘curtain’ or ‘carpet,’ he just likes impressing you with his knowledge. It’s the most astonishing thing, it really is.
