'Hodor!': 'Game of Thrones' favorite is back

"They have no idea what's going to happen." - Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead-Wright), trailer for Game of Thrones, Season Six.

The secrets of HBO's Game of Thrones are safe with Kristian Nairn.

The Northern Irish actor and DJ is chattier than his character, Hodor, a fan favorite best known for his one, all-purpose line: "Hodor!"

Confirming that the gentle giant and his young master, Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead-Wright), are returning to the show after a year off, Nairn, in a phone interview Monday from his base in Belfast, was spoiler-free.

That's in keeping with the secrecy surrounding Season Six, which premieres at 10 p.m. Sunday and is the first to go beyond the already published works of George R.R. Martin, who missed his deadline for the latest book.

(It's also the first for which HBO didn't provide critics with advance screeners, although President Obama reportedly got some. Not that we're bitter or anything.)

"It's a different territory this season. So they're super-secretive," Nairn said, "and we really want people to be shocked and surprised this year."

The actors "only get to see the scripts of the episodes that we're in. But we talk," he said. "We all try to find out each other's story lines from each other. But we're pretty good at keeping it tight. . . . We try to keep it in the family."

Nairn isn't a fan of spoilers in general.

"I was so looking forward to the new Star Wars movie, and I had it ruined three times, four times in the first couple of days," he said. "It's just terrible."

So, no, I didn't bother asking whether Jon Snow (Kit Harington) was dead or whether he will, at the insistence of his many fans, be somehow reanimated. Even gentle probing about whether Hodor's relationship to Bran might change now that the latter is under the tutelage of the Three-Eyed Raven (recast for Season Six with Max von Sydow), got me nowhere.

"I can't say without giving spoilers, so I'm not going to say anything," Nairn said, adding, "I hope he's not made redundant."

He credits a childhood hearing issue for which he learned sign language - he later studied to become an interpreter - with helping him wring multiple meanings from a not-so-simple "Hodor!"

"It's not all about the signs in sign language. It's all about your facial expressions and how you articulate your body."

Hodor's absence from Season Five didn't go unnoticed, said Nairn, who has traveled the world as the DJ for a Game of Thrones-theme event called Rave of Thrones.

"Hodor is a unique character - in some ways, a bit of comic relief and also some people call him the heart of the show. You know, a moral compass - no, he's not a moral compass, you can't be a moral compass and only say one word," he said, laughing. "But he's a nice guy in a horrible universe. I think people missed that. They certainly told me they did."

Plus, "you need a bit of light sometimes. It's a very heavy show."

And speaking of heavy: It's clear from pictures, and a Season Six trailer, that Hempstead-Wright, whose character lost the use of his legs after being pushed from a tower in the first episode, has grown a bit since we last saw him at the end of Season Four.

"I think the word is exponentially," said Nairn, whose character has largely been responsible for transporting Bran, sometimes on his back.

"I met him when he was 9 or 10 years old, and he was tiny, perfect for the part of Bran, absolutely perfect. And now he's a 6-foot-tall charming young man. And you know, I still see Isaac. I still see the little boy. But he's so heavy," said Nairn, who tops out at 6-foot-11.

"He's like a Great Dane. When you see a Great Dane puppy, you sort of say it grows into its legs. He has these really long legs, and I'm assuming he's going to grow into them. . . . So he's going to be a tall chap. So for me to carry him for the remainder of the show - you never know when we'll end up leaving the show, who knows? - it's going to be more and more difficult."

It didn't help that a car accident, shortly before he began filming Season Four, left Nairn with back issues.

Though he'd like "one of those loading contraptions Sigourney Weaver wore in Alien . . . I don't think the technology has gotten to Westeros yet," he joked.

"You have to grin and bear it. The show must go on."

graye@phillynews.com
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