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The Daily Star, Oneonta, N.Y., Friday, April 22, 2016 2 By Cassie Dresch TV Media W inter is here, folks. After a grueling, al- most year-long wait, "Game of Thrones" is back, and boy oh boy is there a lot to chew on. Season 6 of the critically acclaimed se- ries premieres Sunday, April 24, on HBO. From Jon Snow's (Kit Har- ington, "Pompeii," 2014) death and the unknown fate of Sansa (Sophie Turner, "Barely Lethal," 2015) and Theon (Alfie Allen, "John Wick," 2014) to Tyrion's (Pe- ter Dinklage, "Threshold") adventures and Arya's (Maisie Williams, "Doctor Who") eye-opening predica- ment, fans are itching for an- swers — especially since there's no more source ma- terial from which to glean even an inkling of what's to come. So, just like Snow, we know nothing except what has slowly leaked out, and even still, it's not much. We know that Bran (Isaac Hempstead Wright, "The Awakening," 2011) and Hodor (Kristian Nairn, "Four Warriors," 2015) are back — and with the Three-Eyed Ra- ven (Max von Sydow, "Shut- ter Island," 2010) — after remaining conspicuously ab- sent throughout season 5. We know Golden Globe win- ner Ian McShane ("Dead- wood") joins the cast for a minor, yet important, role. We know that we meet members of Samwell Tarly's (John Bradley, "Borgia") family. But other than cast- ing news, everything's shrouded in mystery. Of course, mystery is good and often welcomed, unless you're like the legions of fans who have read the books on which the show is based and are worried about spoilers. George R.R. Mar- tin's epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire has cap- tivated audiences since the first novel's release in 1996, but Martin's been a bit slow with releasing his novels, and only five of the seven planned works have been published so far. Still, series creators and showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss assured fans in an interview with Entertain- ment Weekly last month that there's nothing to worry about. "People are talking about whether the books are going to be spoiled — and it's real- ly not true," Benioff said. "So much of what we're do- ing diverges from the books at this point. And while there are certain key elements that will be the same, we're not going to talk so much about that. ... People are going to be very surprised when they read the books after the show. They're quite diver- gent in so many respects for the remainder of the show." Weiss added that they knew it was inevitable that they'd pass the books, so they took a silver-lining ap- proach, hoping the fans would, too. "At a certain point, we re- alized we were going to out- pace the books," he said, "and we kind of chose to see it as a great thing on both sides — there's this amazing world George has created, and now there are two dif- ferent versions, and there's no reason we can see why you can't be thrilled and sur- prised and dismayed by both of these different versions of this world." Martin, for his part, told IGN in February that, in a per- fect world, he would have had the sixth book, "The Winds of Winter," published by the start of "Game of Thrones'" sixth season, but other factors stalled that desire. "Ideally, I would have liked to have finished the books and have the story complete, but the show moves at a faster pace than I do," Martin said. "That's partly because I'm a slow writer and I've always been a slow writer, and also I've had a lot of distractions in the last few years. I wrote several episodes [of 'Game of Thrones'] in the early sea- sons. I'm a co-executive pro- ducer. That took up a consid- erable amount of time. But it is what it is." He's right — it is what it is, and now the books' fans and the show's fans are in the same place. No one, save the cast and crew, knows where the story's heading, and after a hugely successful fifth sea- son that broke the record for most Emmy wins by a series in a single year (12 wins of 24 nominations), it's tough not to feel excited for season 6. Benioff even fed the frenzy with a bold statement about the new season. "Usually there's an epi- sode or two we're kind of nervous about that didn't turn out as well as we hoped," he told Entertain- ment Weekly. "This season there is not a weak episode. ... We're always reluctant to say it's 'the best season yet' because so much of that is in the eyes of the beholder. And Dan [Weiss] and I are so close to it that it's impossi- ble to be unbiased. But that's my sense — watching [the episodes] all together now, this is the best one we've done." Let that sink in: "The best one we've done." If that doesn't get you hyped for the new season of "Game of Thrones," then nothing will. So get set to return to Wes- teros, Essos and everywhere in between as season 6 of the hit drama "Game of Thrones" premieres Sunday, April 24, on HBO. A/Bulls Head Inn B/Laura Reyda 2 x 2 coverstory You know nothing 'Game of Thrones' ventures into uncharted territory By Adam Thomlison TV Media Q: I just finished watching "Rocky Balboa," the sixth Rocky movie, and was wondering about the guy who played Mason Dixon. Who is he? A: The 2006 hit "Rocky Balboa" continued the franchise's tradition of hiring actual boxers to fill key roles. Mason "The Line" Dixon, the younger champ who wants to take on the leg- endary Rocky Balboa, was played by real-life pro boxer Anto- nio Tarver. Tarver was the International Boxing Organization light heavyweight champion at the time "Rocky Balboa" was made. He later lost that belt but is still fighting — his pro re- cord is 31 wins, six losses and two no contests. He previously fought for the American Olympic team at the 1996 games in Atlanta, where he won bronze after losing in the semifinals. The films made before and after "Rocky Balboa" made simi- lar casting choices. The 2015 hit "Creed" featured British pro Tony Bellew as the main villain/opponent, "Pretty" Ricky Con- lan, while 1990's "Rocky V" had Rocky squaring off against Tommy Morrison, who would go on to become the real-life heavyweight champion in 1993. Of course, the lot of them just can't measure up to the real- life boxer who appeared in the first Rocky film in 1976: Joe Fra- zier. The legendary heavyweight champ actually inspired parts of the film, such as basing it in Philadelphia (as well as the bit about using sides of beef as punching bags). Q: I'm rewatching "Perry Mason" on MeTV and loving it. What else has the actor who played Paul Drake done? A: Sadly, "Perry Mason" was almost the last role William Hopper ever took (and he probably wished it was the last). Despite being just 42 when he took the role of Paul Drake, faithful private detective to the hotshot defense lawyer Perry Mason, most of his career lay behind him by that point. Hopper died of a heart attack in 1970, at the age of 55. He went into a (second) retirement period after "Perry" left the air, returning four years later to appear in the notoriously bad 1970 film "Myra Breckinridge" (Time magazine's review called it "an insult to intelligence, an affront to sensibility and an abomination to the eye"). An early retirement seemed reasonable in Hopper's case, since he took his first role before he was a year old. The son of two acting parents, Hopper's first role was playing "Infant in Carriage" in the 1916 comedy "Sunshine Dad," which starred his father, DeWolf Hopper. Have a question? Email us at questions@tvtabloid.com. 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