Liam Cunningham and Iwan Rheon On The Coming Troubles for Season 6

Game of Thrones Season 5 ended on a dark note, and I’m not just talking about the death of Jon Snow. By the end of the finale, no one was in a good place. Dany was the captive of a khalasar. Cersei had been brought as low as she could go. Margaery was still in prison. Myrcella died in her father’s arms. Arya was blinded. Theon and Sansa leapt from the walls of Winterfell. Melisandre and Davos found themselves the only survivors of Stannis’ doomed campaign.

As Liam Cunningham, who plays Davos, tells IGN this week, “There’s a lot of people in a lot of trouble at the end of Season 5. There aren’t too many good stories. Arya’s the same, Sam’s the same. There definitely won’t be a comedy episode any time soon.”

But Cunningham is promising great things for the coming season, even if we are at the darkest point before the dawn. “There is the usual, for lack of a better word, death and destruction. The guillotine swings quite heavily this season, and there is — I can guarantee it because I was there for some of it — there is some astonishing stuff this season. There are jaw-dropping moments this season that, when I read them, I was dying to see how they were going to be filmed, and I was part of some of that stuff. They’ve pushed the boundaries this season — and I know we say that every year, but that is absolutely our job.”

Without Stannis, though, Davos is a character who has lost his reason for being on the show, and the person he can bond with over this devastating loss—Melisandre—is the one who is largely responsible for it, as well as the death of his beloved Shireen. Cunningham won’t say one way or the other if Davos will find out that Melisandre burned the girl alive. But he does hint that the reckoning will come. “It would be bad storytelling if that didn’t happen.”

Personally, he hopes Davos can live to retirement age and then “head to… the Florida of [Westeros] — where do they have that beautiful… Dorne!” That makes exactly one fan of the show who has said they’re eager to get back to Dorne. But first, Davis knows the rest of the characters of the show have to learn what he already knows, “that this skirmish in the south, this whole thing with the Boltons and with whoever, with the Lannisters and who’s going to run Westeros, is that she’s saying, “This is chump change compared to what’s coming from the north.”

Speaking of the Boltons, IGN also caught up with Iwan Rheon (Ramsay Bolton) and Michael McElhatton (Roose Bolton) at the Game of Thrones Season 6 premiere grey carpet. As Rheon admits, Ramsay is in trouble: he’s not going to handle the loss of Sansa and Theon very well at all.

As Michael McElhatton confirms, Ramsay’s inability to play the long game like his father has screwed things up for the Boltons royally. Hopefully, they won’t be able to get back on track this season. And maybe, finally, we can see Ramsay get what’s coming to him.

Rheon also spoke to Shortlist about the character more generally, and talked about the importance of a sense of humor when you’re doing a show as grim as this one. “You’ve got to try to keep your focus, but sometimes, because of the sheer ridiculousness of how evil these characters are, we laugh,” he said. “That dinner party in Season 5, where we were being so horrendous, everyone was just laughing. There’s so much tension and it’s got to crack sometimes.”

And that sense of humor transfers to Ramsay himself, who does seem to undertake his grim duties with a kind of wicked glee. “He’s not just evil and doing things, he’s actually enjoying it. You get that sense of fun. I guess it makes it slightly easier for the audience that he’s a bit funny.”

He also talks about the ever-presence of death on the Game of Thrones set (“You get the script and that’s when everyone’s nervously flicking through.”) and says that he wishes he could have gotten to do a scene with Charles Dance before Tywin died. Him and everyone else. Finally, he says it would have been interesting for Ramsay and Jon Snow to meet. But that can’t happen, because of Jon Snow’s death and all.

One more: Jonathan Pryce (the High Sparrow) stopped by Newsweek to talk politics, Game of Thrones, and his lengthy acting career. He relishes playing a character like the High Sparrow, a man of many complexities. “People say, ‘You’re playing a bad guy,’ and I’m thinking, ‘I’m not playing a bad guy. I’m playing a good guy.’ High Sparrow believes he’s good, as do many religious fundamentalists believe they are good. Ultimately, what they are doing is wrong.”

"I hope he gets his comeuppance one day—but not necessarily [in] season six."

Can we take that as an indication that the High Sparrow will live through Season 6? We’ll find out soon enough.