After a lengthy break from his long-running career in TV, where he focused on fatherhood and his federal politics campaign, James Mathison is back on Aussie screens.
The TV veteran has been announced as a co-host on Foxtel’s new Thrones 360 , a show dedicated to recapping, reflecting and rejoicing the juggernaut that is Game of Thrones, which premiers on Monday, March 18.
Mathison, 41, will be joined by News Corp gaming columnist and emerging talent Stephanie Bendixsen on the weekly dive into everything Westeros as we countdown to the final season, which will stream express from the US on Monday, April 15 at 11am AEDT on Foxtel.
The last time we saw the former Australian Idol co-host on TV was in 2015 when he appeared on Celebrity Apprentice.
He then shocked Aussies when he made the bombshell announcement he’d be challenging Tony Abbott as an independent candidate in the safe seat of Warringah in 2016, an electorate the former prime minister has held for 25 years.
The father-of-two, an environmentalist who lobbied for policies that benefited the younger generation, decided not to recontest this year after winning 11.4 per cent of the primary vote.
Instead, Mathison will be dissecting the events of GoT on TV while politicians battle it out in the upcoming federal election.
“When you’ve got backstabbing and conniving and double crossing with Game of Thrones, I mean, who needs politics?” Mathison told news.com.au.
“He (Abbott) won by a huge margin. But I think if it helped people to start thinking about doing things differently and realising ‘hang on, even in the safe seats we do have capacity to create change’, then that was my main goal.”
While his main focus this year is dabbling in entertainment projects again, Mathison said he could see himself giving politics a second go.
“Politically speaking, in the future I’d love to be part of the movement that tries to change how we do politics,” he said.
“This adversarial system means that often we aren’t interested in finding any common ground, in fact, you’re often rewarded in politics through bipartisanship and demeaning the other side.”
Thrones 360 will air on Mondays, beginning from March 18 at 7.30pm on Fox8, and 9.30pm on Fox Showcase, and will recap every detail from the first seven seasons, featuring appearances from celebrity guests and News Corp journalists, including news.com.au entertainment reporter Bronte Coy.
The show will then air live from Monday, April 15 at 9.30pm on Fox Showcase, immediately after each new episode of GoT, to dissect the latest events.
In a bit of a twist, Mathison predicts Jaime Lannister will have some sort of “hero moment”.
“He’s been bloody, he’s been violent, but I just feel like he is going to emerge a hero.
“And I think Bran Stark might have something to do with how the white walkers came about.”
Bendixsen on the other hand is entertaining a fan theory suggesting Bran is actually the Night King.
“There’s a really interesting fan theory that Bran is the Night King so I would love to see if that’s true or not.”
— Thrones 360 premieres on Monday, March 18 at 7.30pm on Fox8.
