THE TELEGRAPH – Rose Leslie has a phobia of velvet. This is a remarkably strange coincidence as I happen to be sitting on a small sofa, in a brightly lit corridor of her agent’s office in central London, on which the only thing other than me is a giant purple velvet cushion. Truly, I’ve never seen such a large velvet object. It is resplendent in its velvetness. It seems to have been designed specifically to taunt Rose Leslie and confront her with her fears in the most extreme manner possible – almost like aversion therapy.
“No, no don’t worry!” Leslie says but I can see her actually shudder as I stroke it. “Honestly, it’s fine,” she insists politely. “It’s just the touch of it I don’t like. The sound it makes.” I put the cushion on the floor and she visibly relaxes, sitting cross-legged on the sofa in her jeans and trainers.
Luckily, the 29-year-old actress has never played a part which requires her to wear velvet robes. Her breakthrough after graduating from LAMDA was playing Gwen, the self-improving housemaid in the first series of Downton Abbey. More recently she has been on our screens as DS Emma Lane alongside Idris Elba in Luther. But the role for which she is most famous is Ygritte, the flame-haired wildling lover of Jon Snow in HBO’s hit series Game of Thrones. Leslie was swathed in furs and stitched-together animal pelts for much of the shoot which kept her warm as she filmed in Iceland.
“It was the winter months,” she says, “so we only had from 10am to 2.30pm to film before we’d lose light. We were in the middle of a glacier. It’s a really, really stunning place and we saw the Northern Lights, which was extraordinary. I’ve never before been somewhere so vast and magic. And I’m Scottish, so I have an affinity with cold, crisp days.”
When the light went, the cast would all traipse back to their hotel in the pitch black and pass the time playing card games. Did she ever wish she was cast as one of the characters who got to film in warmer climates? Daenerys, for instance, who is played by Emilia Clarke and got to waft around sunny locations in Morocco and Malta? Leslie laughs. “Have you seen my skin?” She stretches out thin, white arms. “Can you imagine what I would be like in Malta or Morocco?”
But there was another reason she enjoyed filming in Iceland – namely Kit Harington, who plays Jon Snow and with whom Leslie’s character had a steamy romantic union. After much speculation, the couple have now confirmed they are dating in real life. Harington said in a recent interview: “If you’re already attracted to someone, and then they play your love interest, it becomes very easy to fall in love.”
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