Ryan Coleman is a news writer for Entertainment Weekly with previous work in MUBI Notebook, Slant, and the LA Review of Books.
Witnessing executions, feeding their abusers to hounds, and being murdered and resurrected on Game of Thrones were child's play compared to what Sophie Turner and Kit Harington had to endure on the set of their new film, The Dreadful: a kiss.
"I'm sure out of all the people on Thrones, Jon is probably the least up for incest," Harington joked in a red carpet interview with Entertainment Tonight, which released behind-the-scenes footage of the actor and his GoT sibling Turner both gagging immediately after their first Dreadful smooch on Thursday.
In the clip, the pair, who fans came to know and adore as the noble Jon Snow and his resilient half-sister Sansa Stark, sit side by side in the wilderness. After a moment of hesitation, Harington lurches forward and plants a passionate kiss on Turner, who responds in kind. But the second an off-screen voice yells "cut," Harington playfully gags, turning his head to the side, causing Turner to balloon her cheeks and retch as if holding in vomit.
"We get on set and it's the first kissing scene and we are both retching," Turner previously told Seth Meyers on a 2025 episode of Late Night. "Like, really, it is vile. It was the worst. Another really bad moment in my career."
Turner relived the moment from the film directed by rising horror auteur Natasha Kermani, relaying her first panicked thought after locking lips: "Oh shoot, that's my brother."
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Harington and Turner starred on Game of Thrones together for the full, eight-season run in the 2010s. Neither starts the series out with much in the way of prospects, with Jon the illegitimate, unacknowledged son of a Lord and Sansa relegated to the status of servant after her father is executed before her very eyes.
But by the end of the series, both characters are utterly transformed. Jon ascends to the status of Lord Commander, uniting disparate forces against the White Walkers, while Sansa fights tooth and nail to become the tough Queen in the North. They remain two of GoT fans' enduring favorites.
In The Dreadful, the half-siblings are recast as lovers Jago (Harington) and Anne (Turner) in a medieval English-set thriller. The film's official logline describes the "unnerving gothic tale" co-starring Marcia Gay Harden as following hers and Turner's characters' "struggle to survive on the outskirts of society. But when a man from Anne's past returns from war, a curse begins to take shape through a mysterious knight and threatens to destroy them all."
The Dreadful opens in theaters on Feb. 20.
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