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"Game of Thrones" star Kit Harington will play his ancestor Robert Catesby, the mastermind behind the failed Gunpowder Plot, in "Gunpowder," an upcoming BBC miniseries.

Catesby was the leader of the 1605 assassination attempt against King James I of England. He and his crew — which included Guy Fawkes — were aiming to blow up London's House of Lords, but an anonymous letter tipped off authorities, and Fawkes was infamously busted with barrels of gunpowder.
Hulton Archive/Getty Images Robert Catesby was the mastermind behind the failed Gunpowder Plot.

Catesby was shot and killed in the chaos, and his head was put on display outside Parliament.

In 2016, Harington revealed that he was a direct descendant of Robert Catesby on his mother's side — and that the Catesby and Harington families had previously had a humorous interaction years before Kit's parents were ever even born.

"When (Catesby's) head was marched past the houses of Parliament on a pike, John Harington on my father's side, who was in the houses of Parliament at the time, looked at him and is quoted as saying, 'He's an ugly fellow, isn't he?" Harington said on The Andrew Marr Show in 2016. "Isn't that brilliant?"

BBC One teased "Gunpowder" on Monday with a 30-second clip that poked fun at Harington's role on HBO's "Game of Thrones."

"Autumn is coming…," the network tweeted, referencing the famous "GoT" line "Winter is coming."

"My wife is dead, my name disgraced. My friends and family tortured and hanged," Harington ominously narrates in the clip. "We must strike at the root. Fawkes will light the fuse and I, Robert Catesby, will blow the king and all his men to hell."

The three-part drama also stars Liv Tyler as Catesby's cousin Anne Vaux and "Downton Abbey" actor Tom Cullen as Guy Fawkes.