Pop legend Prince to be honored with TV specials
‘GoT’ bosses preview season 6
LOS ANGELES, April 23, (RTRS): Following Thursday’s shocking news of Prince’s sudden death, the world continues to honor the musician and will do so throughout the weekend when the icon’s life is celebrated on various television specials.
“Dateline NBC” houred an hourlong tribute special for Prince on Friday April 22 at 10 pm titled “Prince: Life & Death of an Icon.” Celebrating his life and legacy, the special will review Prince’s last days, while also taking a look at other music legends who have recently died. Lester Holt will anchor “Prince: Life & Death of an Icon” from Los Angeles with feature reporting from Dateline correspondents Harry Smith, Andrea Canning, Cynthia McFadden, Josh Mankiewicz and Natalie Morales.
ABC’s “20/20” aired an hourlong special Friday, April 22 at 10 pm, anchored by Elizabeth Vargas. “Prince: Death of a Legend” will report on the incredible life and untimely death of the music legend. Along with Vargas, the program will feature reporting from Dan Harris from Prince’s home in Minneapolis; Chris Connelly in Los Angeles; and Deborah Roberts in New York.
Friday night’s episode of MTV2’s “Uncommon Sense with Charlamagne” will feature Charlamagne taking a moment to remember Prince, recalling the first time they met and his belief that Prince could levitate. The episode airs at 11 pm ET.
This weekend’s “Saturday Night Live” will be a special clip show highlighting the memorable performances from Prince over the years, appearing on “SNL.” The 11:30 pm program is titled “SNL Goodnight Sweet Prince.”
Prince guest starred on “New Girl” back in 2014, and this upcoming Tuesday, Fox will air his episode at 9:30 pm
“New Girl” will also air two original episodes at 8 pm and 9 pm that same night with a new episode of “Grandfathered” airing at 8:30 pm Prince’s episode of “New Girl” takes place of “The Grinder” encore, which was previously set to air in that time slot.
The buzz going into the upcoming season premiere of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” is reaching deafening proportions — especially given all the mystery surrounding the fate of Jon Snow (Kit Harington).
Creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were typically tight-lipped on any spoilers about upcoming plot points, but they assured Variety that fans won’t be disappointed. “I honestly believe it’s the strongest season we’ve had,” says Benioff.
Question: Would you say this season has a particular theme? Benioff: We talked about home a lot. Weiss: A lot of homecoming. Coming home.
Benioff: That’s one of the nice things about having this long story, a multiple season story — you’re following these characters for... you’re literally spending years with them. You’re truly watching them grow up in some cases or grow old in other cases, like us. Characters who have been separated for many seasons, seeing them reunited. Characters who have never met over the course of the show, seeing them come together for the first time. Those things become very exciting for us, both to write the scenes and also just as audience members to watch them. To watch these actors, these characters come together.
Weiss: There’s energy that comes with compressing something, especially if it’s been allowed to mature. When you start to push everything and everyone together there’s just an excitement that comes with that. There’s nothing that feels peripheral anymore because there isn’t anything that’s peripheral anymore. It’s central people interacting with central people. Like David said, it becomes a lot more exciting to write. I feel like it probably becomes more exciting to watch.
Just like one of the things last year that was so much fun for us was just seeing Daenerys and Tyrion come together. These are two people who are very central to the story who live thousands of miles apart. Tyrion mentions Daenerys in passing to somebody else but they’ve never been in the same space. Just the image of them sitting at a table looking at each other and exchanging words with each other is in its own way is as exciting as a battle of thousands of people fighting thousands of people. That’s, for us, always something that we really look forward to with each subsequent season. That we can do more and more, more and more condensing and compressing and putting people together with people we know together with people they’ve never met before.