Once again, James Hibberd has the scoop, revealing that Mark Gatiss—writer and actor on Sherlock, among many other pop favorite shows—will be returning on season 5 to reprise his role as Tycho Nestoris of the Iron Bank of Braavos. Last seen negotiating with Stannis Baratheon over the Bank’s financial support, his appearance in season 5 certainly heralds more use of Braavos and the Iron Bank for this season.
Hibberd also adds that Gatiss will be filming in Croatia next week.
Although HBO’s Game of Thrones was blanked at the Primetime Emmys, the number of nominations the show received was among the most any regular drama series received this year…. and when you factor the Creative Arts Emmys (of which the show won four), it was the most nominated drama of the year with a total of 19. The show’s cast and crew were out in force in support, and thanks to so many people being around Los Angeles it certainly helped get some involvement in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge as GRRM, Sibel Kekilli, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Lena Headey, and Kit Harington all took the challenge for the cause. Others who have participated from the cast: Pedro Pascal, Maisie Williams, Sophie Turner, and Joe Dempsie.
Besides the Emmys, we were present at Loncon where “The Rains of Castamere received the Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) Hugo Award. David Benioff and Dan Weiss were both in the crowd, and seemed very pleased to be at their first ever Worldcon for such an occasion. Both of them have spoken in the past of their mutual love of genre literature when they were younger, when they read the likes of Fritz Leiber, Le Guin, and Tolkien, and speaking with them afterward they certainly seemed over the moon at winning the most well-known genre award around.
This is the third consecutive win for Game of Thrones at the Hugos, and this one in particular was noteworthy for winning despite being in the UK, with an outsized UK-based membership who rallied around Doctor Who. “The Rains of Castamere” had a substantial lead in first selections, but as episodes were eliminated “The Day of the Doctor” began to gather more and more steam until coming within passing distance… only for Orphan Black being dropped from the list, and votes for it redistributed, giving the episode a surge that led to its victory.
We have two pairs of tickets to see George R.R. Martin and Robin Hobb on Tuesday 19th August at the Freemasons Hall in London! This event is a once in a lifetime chance to see to two of the world’s greatest storytellers discuss how they build their fictional universes, create their characters and balance fantasy and reality, their influences and inspirations, their struggles and successes. A must-attend for all fantasy fans. To enter the competition, just answer two simple questions:
* The Stark children aren’t the only people in the fantasy genre who have a close association with a wolf. In fact, Robin Hobb has a particularly notable example of this in her Farseer trilogy. What’s the name of Fitz’s wolf in that series?
* Which of the Stark direwolves is your favorite, and why?
You can leave your answer in comments below. The contest closes Thursday evening, so be quick ... and be ready to keep an eye on your Facebook messages in case you’re a winner as we’ll need your contact information!
If you would like to hear more about HarperVoyager’s authors including George and Robin, why not subscribe to their newsletter http://harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk/subscribe/ “>here.
And tickets for the event, which includes a signed copy of Fool’s Assassin by Robin Hobb, are available
According to the Belfast Telegraph, veteran Northern Irish actor J.J. Murphy passed away mere days after filming his first scene for season 5 of Game of Thrones. Heretofore an unpublicized member of the cast, the Telegraph reports that Murphy was cast in the role of Ser Denys Mallister, a senior man of the Night’s Watch who in the novels was the commander of the Shadow Tower and a leading candidate to succeed Lord Commander Mormont. The Telegraph notes he was due to film more scenes, and speculates as to whether the role will be removed from the show or if another actor will be cast to fill it.
Murphy, 86 years old at the time of his death, had decades of theatre experience. According to the Telegraph, he was best known for his work at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast, where actors such as Liam Neeson and Ciaran Hinds cut their teeth and learned their craft alongside him. Our condolences to his friends and family.
UPDATE: HBO’s publicity twitter has released the following statement from David Benioff and Dan Weiss:
One of the original parts of Westeros was A Ring of Ice and Fire, a webring that sought to bring together all A Song of Ice and Fire fansites when the fandom still was in its infancy. Over time, webrings grew rather obsolete and outdated as a way of connecting similar sites and eventually the third-party solutions disappeared. We did attempt to make our own within the software we use to run Westeros, but it was poorly suited to it, and as a result the webring has been defunct in all but name for several years. We have now finally pulled the plug on it and removed that section from the site.
However, we are still very much interested in seeing the A Song of Ice and Fire fandom thrive and given the amount of traffic that we do get at Westeros, we thought that we might at least replace the webring with a simpler, more straight-forward solution in the shape of a Links database. Now, if you click through to that page, you will notice that it is as of yet very much in its infancy. However, the submission page is up and running and we hope that we will start getting a few submissions so that we can shape the rest of the page around the content once it starts appearing.
Thanks to the intrepid Marino Santirso, Westeros.org is happy to present his diary from the London Film and Comic Convention. Over the coming days, we’ll be posting interviews with a number of Game of Thrones actors that were present at the convention, and as always they’re quite the charming bunch. Marino has provided an introduction to the diary—and himself—here... and as it happens, we’ve also posted the very first interview as well with actor Finn Jones, who plays the famous Knight of Flowers, Ser Loras Tyrell. Finn was actually one of the first actors we ourselves interviewed way back during the first season, and we’re pleased to say he’s as exuberant as always!
You can read Finn’s interview here. As the week progresses, we’ll add further interviews with the likes of Gethin Anthony (Renly Baratheon), Kate Dickie (Lysa Arryn), Daniel Portman (Podrick Payne), and Kristian Nairn (HODOR) !