Exclusive: After several years James Mathison is back on screen — and this time it’s a passion play shared by millions of people.
The TV veteran is hosting Foxtel’s new Thrones 360, a show dedicated to recapping, reflecting and rejoicing the juggernaut that is Game of Thrones.
Mathison, 41, will be joined by News Corp gaming columnist Stephanie ‘Hex’ 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.
BENDIXSEN: How The Division 2 world feels so true-to-life
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 only 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; a link that’s not lost on him.
“When you’ve got backstabbing and canviving and double crossing with Game of Thrones, I mean, who needs politics?” Mathison quipped.
“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.
“I think there’s a really strong moderate candidate (Zali Steggall) who can win there and I think that’s all I ever wanted was to try to shift the needle a little bit.”
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.
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.
“It is literally the only show that I watch,” Mathison said. “I’m not a big TV man but I have been obsessed with this show from the very first season. Very early on I realised this show is throwing a lot of the conventional ways to tell stories on its head.”
Bendixsen, a self-confessed pop culture nerd, credited Game of Thrones for making the fantasy genre “cool”.
“I just love fantasy and escapism, I think for a long time throughout the ‘80s, fantasy was a bit daggy,” Ms Bendixsen told the Sunday Herald Sun.
“Then Game of Thrones came along and made it lavish and sexy and suddenly it was cool.
“People who thought dungeons and dragons were lame now they love it. To me that culture shift is really amazing and it shows it really is the coolest thing to ever come to television.”
*Thrones 360 premieres on Monday, March 18 at 7.30pm on Fox8.
