The New Yorker Radio Hour - Peter Dinklage on Cyrano, and Life After “Thrones”

Episode Date: December 20, 2019

In the classic play “Cyrano de Bergerac,” a romantic with an exceptionally large and ugly nose pines after an unattainable woman. “As a person who looks like me, whenever I would watch a version of ‘Cyrano,’ I would just think, ‘That’s an actor in a fake nose,’ ” says Peter Dinklage. Dinklage, who has dwarfism, plays the character in a New Group adaptation by his wife, Erica Schmidt, with music by the National. But Dinklage avoids wearing a prosthetic, and he tells Michael Schulman that the nose isn’t really the point. The play is about “everyone’s capacity to not feel worthy of love.” To “Game of Thrones” fans who were devastated by the show’s ending, Dinklage has only tough love to offer. “They didn’t want it to end so a lot of people got angry. This happens.” He is not distraught about Daenerys, who turned out to be quite a brutal ruler. “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.” Plus, every year, countless poor spellers accidentally address their Santa letters to Satan. Satan—played by Kathleen Turner—always replies. 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.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour, I'm David Remnick. Because this is the season, we're going to start with a little story, a Christmas story. And here's Kathleen Turner, in children's holiday letters, to Satan. Dear Satan, what I really want this year more than anything is a Barbie dream house. It's pretty and pink, and I will keep it in my room near my bed. Merry Christmas, Allison, age six. I see what you've done here.

You intended for your letter to go to Santa, but due to your poor grasp of spelling, it has instead come to me. It really should go without saying, but I will not be getting you this so-called dream house, Because, well, because I do not want to. But I will suggest this. Buy it yourself.

Simply take $2 from your mom's wallet every day, and soon enough, you'll have your useless and silly miniature house. Regards, Satan. Dear Satan, I am Daniel and I love you. I want an Xbox for Christmas. Daniel age nine Dear Daniel Am I getting your name right?

You only mentioned it twice in your ten-word letter I've wasted five minutes of my life Googling this X-box And I suppose I'm left with one question Why This game, Grand Theft Auto Indeed seems quite fun But why waste your day sitting in front of the TV

when there are so many actual cars to be stolen. Damn it, Daniel. Get out there and live. Your friend, Satan. Dear Satan, I just want my mom and dad to get back together. Stephanie, age 11. Stephanie, you're over 10. Stop telling people your age.

It's childish. As for your mommy and daddy. Maybe it's my own shit, but it feels as if you're blaming me for their separation. While I did put Vicky from accounting in front of your father to tempt him, I didn't make up your father's unconvincing lie about working late. But I feel bad. I'm going to send you something called an Xbox best Satan. Dear Satan, I want a computer so I could do better in school and get a good job and make lots and lots of money.

Thrum David Dear David, being the embodiment of pure evil, I will not get you this computer. I'm not Mark Zucker, or am I? Kidding, I'm not. But if you really want a job that allows you to make a great deal of money, money fast. You can go ahead and send me your resume. I have a number of very close friends at Goldman Sachs. Regards, Satan. He is Satan. All I want for Christmas is a world of peace. Brian 8.4. Dear Brian. No. Children's holiday letters to Satan by Matt Passett from the New Yorker's

Daily Shouts, and perform for us by the inimitable Kathleen Turner, along with the highly talented children of the New Yorker Radio Hour. For a long time, the actor Peter Dinklage considered himself a man of the theater, a downtown, off-Broadway kind of guy. He had a few notable roles in small films, but then came HBO's adaptation of Game of Thrones, and he was cast in the role of Tyrion Lannister. One reviewer described Tyrion as a cynic, a drinker, an outcast, and conspicuously, the novel's most intelligent presence. Yes, father, I'm guilty. Guilty. Is that what you want to hear?

You admit you poisoned the king? No. Of that I'm innocent. I'm guilty of a far more monstrous crime. I'm guilty of being a dwarf. You are not on trial for being a dwarf. Oh, I've been on trial. trial for that my entire life. Dinklage, who

was four and a half feet tall, gave Tyrion a towering presence, and he played the part for ten years, and won four Emmys for his performance. But Game of Thrones ended earlier this year, and Dinklage has gone back to his roots in the theater. I've done

12 shows in the past eight days. I'm fried, okay. Gotcha. Dinklage is the lead in a new adaptation of Cyrano, the classic play about a romantic who tries to win the woman he loves, despite his extraordinarily large and unattractive nose. Dinklage came in recently to talk with the staff writer Michael Schulman, and they spoke about how he connects with the character of Sironaut.

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 Sirono, 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 the serenose 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.

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 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, me? 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 um question says your wife years ago yes years ago got in touch with the band the national um 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 and 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. 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.

Um, 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 Hervey. And you play the French-born dwarf actor, Hervey Villishees, who is known for playing knick-knack in the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun. and even more so for saying deplane deplane 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 he 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 Herbe style. The man did nothing quietly. 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. I mean, 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, 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.

But 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 going to, 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? You know, there's no time for that.

But those little things add up to in our DNA in terms of how 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 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. 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 The cartoonists.

Yeah, the cartoonists 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

there were signposts all along the way for that character you're speaking of course of spoiler alert De Nairus, 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, DeNaris. 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 creativity has been sparked.

And I'm trying to rewind and I'm producing now. That inspires me. that sort of being on something from the ground floor, creating something with a writer or director, and that's acting perhaps much more selectively than I've been 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. That you really have to be a good project to get you there. Since you get to rock out so much in Ciro, Is there any chance of getting Wizzy back together? No, but I really want to make a cast album of Zerino. 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, speaking with Michael Schulman, a staff writer at the magazine. You can read more from their interview at New Yorker.com. That's it for today. Thanks for joining us. And remember on Christmas Day, the movie Little Women opens. And if you missed my interview with Greta Gerwig, who wrote and directed the film, you can find it on the podcast of The New Yorker Radio Hour. Have a terrific holiday. And if you're traveling, be safe. Please join us next time for the New Yorker Radio Hour.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by a music. Merrill Garbus of Tuneiards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Cario, Riannon Corby, Karen Frillman, Callalia, David Krasnow, Caroline Lester, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino. With help from Morgan Flannery, Allison McAdam, Monfei Chen, and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.