The 37-year-old Game Of Thrones actor is in the cast of Slave Play at the Noel Coward Theatre, which has set aside two performances aimed at an “all-black-identifying audience” which is “free from the white gaze”. A spokesman for then prime minister Rishi Sunak criticised the idea in February as being “wrong and divisive”. Harrington defended the theatrical production following the first black-out performance, and told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme he believes it is “an incredibly positive thing” .
He said: “Number one – if you are white, no-one’s stopping you buying a ticket, it’s not illegal to buy a ticket for that show, if you want to come. It’s saying ‘We would prefer the audience to be this’. “Number two – I’ve been going to the theatre since I was young, with my mum.
I’ve only ever really known predominantly white audiences. It is still a particularly white space. “So to have the argument that ‘Oh, this is discriminating against white people’ is, I think, vaguely strange and ridiculous.
” Harrington also called it “unlike anything I’ve ever experienced” because it provides a space where “a certain group of people can come and feel open to laughing in a certain way, reacting in a certain way, in sort of safety”. However, he warned that audiences could feel “sucker-punched” by the play because the actors are “saying words to each other, at each other, that you shouldn’t and don’t hear u.