The New Yorker Radio Hour - Peter Dinklage on “Cyrano”

Episode Date: February 22, 2022

Joe Wright’s film “Cyrano,” nominated for an Academy Award for Best Costume Design, was based on Erica Schmidt’s 2018 stage musical of the same name. Peter Dinklage starred in both, as the unattractive but lovestruck swashbuckler of the 1897 play “Cyrano de Bergerac.” Dinklage spoke with Michael Schulman in 2019, and said that Cyrano’s predicament is not really about his famously giant schnoz; it is about “everyone’s capacity to not feel worthy of love.” Dinklage also spoke about the ending of “Game of Thrones,” which had taken place a few months earlier. Fans were still freaking out about Daenerys’s turn to brutality at the series’ end, and Dinklage had little sympathy. “Monsters are created. We vote them into office. . . . Maybe [fans] should have waited for the series finale before you get that tattoo, or name your golden retriever Daenerys. I can’t help you.”   This segment originally aired December 20, 2019. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The film, Serenow, which is up for an Oscar this year, tells a story you might be familiar with. A romantic tries to win the woman he loves, despite having an extraordinarily large and unattractive nose. First he has too much heart, and then not enough. You're jealous. Me? It's fascinating. You're both brilliant, but exact opposites in style.

Christian is overt, passionate, fiery. Where is I? You are coded. Witty? Roofal? Coded? His words aren't better than yours, just differently put. But both are endlessly quotable. You know his letters by her.

You will arrange the meeting. As ever, I am at your service. Serenau stars Peter Dinklage, who also starred in the stage musical version that the film is based on. Dinklage came on our program in 2019. Game of Thrones had just rapped epically, and he hit the stage for the musical Serenow. I've done 12 shows in the past eight days. I'm fried, okay. Gotcha. No problem.

Peter Dinklage spoke with the New Yorker's Michael Shulman, about how he connects with the character. I never felt a connection with the nose of it all. As a person who looks like me, whenever I would watch a version of Serenau, I would just think about that's an actor and a fake nose. And we wanted to really strip it all down and get to the core of what it really is about,

which is people's everybody's capacity to not feel worthy of love, whether you have a giant nose or not. He is very, very beautiful. Beautiful. Yes. He is the most beautiful man I've ever seen. I see. Have you spoken? Never.

How do you know he loves you? I know. How can you love a man if you've never heard his voice? I don't know, but I know that I do. What if he's an idiot? Then I will die. It's really interesting how the show handles the nose part of Cyrano's story because, as you said, you don't wear a prosthetic nose, but other characters refer to his nose as like the thing. We refer to it twice.

Right. At the top. Right. Yeah. But in the audience, I guess we're left to sort of assume that they're talking in a maybe sideways way about your height or. Were you a part of the decision about that? I mean, how did you all discuss how you wanted to handle the nose aspect of it and how it would be presented? Right.

I mean, it does present sort of a puzzle because I'm not wearing a nose and I am the height I am. So people are going, you could feel that they're a bit confused, but that's okay, I think. Let them follow you down the rabbit hole. But again, I don't think it has anything to do with my height either. I think Scott Stanglin, who is my understudy, He's six feet tall or something, and he can play the part probably is good or is better, better than I can. Has he gone on? No, not yet.

We'll never know. So it sort of has nothing to do with any of that, really. I was just cast because they wanted me for it, and I wanted to try something I've never done before. Are you in love? Who I mean? Yes. Yes. I dare, I dare.

With whom? Only the most intelligent, beautiful creature. With whom? With such a description you have to ask. Whom do you love? Have you ever wanted something so badly you cannot breathe? You ever loved someone? The adapter and director Erica Schmidt.

A question says your wife. Years ago, yes. years ago got in touch with the band The National because their music is so romantic and filled with yearning and sometimes heartbreaking and Matt's lyrics are so poetic much like Ciroina's words

that it was such a natural fit and they responded immediately and they wrote these beautiful songs. Many people probably have not seen you sing before but you were in a punk band in the 90s Yeah. Please tell me about your punk band We were punks, but we didn't play punk rock.

A couple of friends from Columbia and a couple friends from where I went to school in Bennington, Vermont. We got together and we just drank too much and played the old CBGBs, and we had a lot of fun. We had a following. But our following was kind of like progressive rock.

It was all guys. What's the point of being in a rock band? If there's no ladies, if you don't have any groupies. but I never intended to be in a band It was just fun for me The group was called Whizzy? Whizzy, yeah Who came up with the name?

I think our drummer Jim did But I felt I was being like a dilettante I felt like they were all real musicians And they still are And I was just slumming it being You know, I don't know Just having fun And I don't think that's fair

What were some of your songs called? I don't think it's I think this New Yorker radio hours is too clean for some of the song titles. No, it's not. Well, we had... That makes me only want to know the song titles more. Yeah. One was called Dick of the Party about being a loser drunk at a party.

So I'll leave it there. So speaking of your many talents, you now have your own production company. And one of the things that you have done is this HBO film, My Dinner with HerVille. And you play the French-born dwarf actor, Hervey Villishees, who is known for playing Nick Nack in the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun and even more so for saying de plain, de plain, on the 70s TV show Fantasy Island. So this project was 14 years in the making. Is that right?

Yeah. And so the writer-director of the film, Sasha Dervasi, had met Hervey years earlier as a journalist and they had this crazy night out on the town in Los Angeles. And then what happened? Well, he hurried killed himself a couple days after Sasha said goodbye to him. So Sasha realized it was sort of a suicide note, which is in true Hervey style. The man did nothing quietly. He was he was he was something else. And I got to know people in his life. He's so deeply loved and he burned so brightly. So, you know, and it was just the first time I've ever played somebody who actually existed, which was a real, really humbling, but also... Well, not only did he exist, but he was, I'm sure... It's a complicated thing.

He was the, you know, the actor with dwarfism who was most famous before you. Well, he didn't, he didn't... I mean, he wasn't really an actor, to be fair. Sorry, Hervey, I love you. He was an incredible painter. Right. But he just enjoyed the lifestyle of it all. We're sort of opposite in that way.

I enjoy the lifestyle, but I don't go for the, I don't know. I try to keep a lower profile, but I enjoy the work itself. Hervey really liked, he loved being the rock star that he was. So he was guilty of that, but no fault to him because he was having a really good time, and he was sort of unapologetic about it. Right. But he never really let his size define him. He wooed and he won many women, which I feel like because of his size,

was treated in the press like, wow. You know, it's just like, no, that wouldn't happen with anybody else who was regular size. It just was like a novelty that he was with women. Well, yeah, he was. Deal with it. Because he was charming. So he was on TV when you were growing up in the 70s. What were your feelings about him and about, you know, representation in popular culture of dwarfism in general?

When you're eight years old, social justice is not really entering into your biosphere there. I remember being a little bit aware that in fantasy island he was the sidekick and, you know, but nothing. Nothing that really bothered me. But then adolescence sort of changes all that, your perspective on. If you live in a unique shape, you become hyper aware of the world around you and how it reacts to you and how you engage with it. I'm not, myself, I'm not always the most politically correct person in terms of my dwarfism. I don't care, really.

I think that can be damaging as well. and put up walls, meaning, like, for example, if I see a kid and he's pointing at me and the parent has them, like, look the other way, what is that, what's that kid going to grow up into? Somebody that can't make eye contact with somebody who's four and a half feet tall.

That's sad to me. I understand it in the moment because they don't want to embarrass me. You know, what are we going to have, like, an educational seminar walking down the street with a child? There's no time for that. But those little things,

add up to in our DNA in terms of how we we see people unique, physically unique. And that can be destructive. No, I don't, I don't, I'm not an actor to like change the world in terms of like how somebody my size is presented. I'm really not. I think, because that would be putting me before the work. And I just, I'm attracted to roles that don't, it's just bad writing to make that the dominant character trait.

It's not my dominant character trait. It's part of, you know, it has to be part of a complex portrait that informs other pieces of your personality. But I just know when you read a script that it's just, they just want you because it's not going to happen. If they want you just to be,

because the suit fits or something, you know. That's actor Peter Dinklage talking with Michael Shillman in 2019. More in a moment. So I am going to have rocks turn at me if I don't ask you about the finale of Game of Thrones. So I'm going to do it right now. Who throws these rocks? The New Yorker is such a peaceful magazine.

People on this on the street. The cartoonists. Yeah, the cartoonists are going to hammering. They throw pictures of rocks. Did you follow the fan response? No. I mean, you're never going to make anybody happy with anything we do. everybody's going to always have an opinion

and that means an ownership but that means they really loved it it's like breaking up with somebody they get upset and I can't speak for everybody but my feeling is they didn't want it to end so a lot of people got angry this is this happens

monsters are created and you don't see it coming we vote them into office you know it happens so for everybody to get upset because they loved a character so much and they had so much faith in that person they were signposts all along the way

for that character you're speaking of course of spoiler denarius Targaryen who took a bit of a fascist turn yeah but that's because you know what was happening all along it added up to something And, you know, there are people who have named their children Colisi and gotten tattoos.

You know, we're all tattoos on people. And you just got to maybe wait until the season finale, the series finale, before you get that tattoo or name your golden retriever, Danearis. I mean, I can't help you. I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. Did you expect that Tyrion would survive through to the end? No, none of us did. None of us did.

We were all nervous when we got the scripts, yeah. Now that the show is done, you have a certain amount of cultural capital that you can really spend on doing things that you want. What do you want to do with it? You have a production company where you can make whatever you're interested in. Yeah. You probably have any wide choice of roles. Actors, they come in in the ninth inning after a lot of... of creativity has been sparked and I'm trying to rewind and I'm producing now and I that inspires me.

That sort of being on something from the ground floor, creating something with a writer or director. And that's what I'm doing now, acting perhaps much more selectively than I've been doing doing, which I think that's just a natural progression of getting older, you know, getting up at 5 a.m. in some strange location when you can be home in bed. It's that you really have to be a good project to get you there. Since you get to rock out so much in Serenow, is there any chance of getting Whizzie back together? No, but I really want to make a cast album of Zirano. That's a goal of mine.

Never been on a cast album. So hopefully the band The National will consider that. It's a real pleasure to talk to you. Thanks for coming in. The actor Peter Dinklage, with the New Yorker's Michael Shulman in 2019. He plays the title role in the film, Serenau, which is nominated for an Academy Award this year for Best Costume Design. And I should say, Dinklage got his wish.

There is a cast album, and Dinklage does sing on it. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Ave Carrillo, Brita Green,

Calalia, David Krasnow, Gauphin and Putuguele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Harrison Keithline and Meng Faye Chen, and guidance from Emily Boutin. And we had additional help this week from Riannon Corby. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.