Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage blasted woke “liberal-minded” critics of him playing Fantasy Island star Hervé Villechaize in the 2018 film My Dinner with Hervé, because they assumed the late Villechaize was Filipino due to how he looked.
“I played Hervé Villechaize in an HBO film, and there was a lot of early backlash: ‘How dare he play a Filipino,'” the actor told comedian Marc Maron in the latest episode of his WTF podcast of the time he was attacked for portraying Villechaize. “They were so liberal-minded — and I am liberal as anybody — but they were so convinced, because of how he looked, Hervé, that he was Filipino, which is r– if that’s not racism, what else?”
“Because he’s not, he was a Frenchman,” the X-Men actor continued. “And his physical condition made him look very cherubic, and I guess, someone from the far East. But they got very angry.”
Maron reacted by adding that Dinklage’s critics “didn’t even have all the information.”
“Nothing, they just assumed,” Dinklage concurred.
During the interview, the actor also slammed Disney’s live-action remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, noting that while they tried to be progressive by casting a Latina actress as Snow White, Disney still kept the “fucking backwards” depiction of “about seven dwarfs living in a cave together.”
“There’s a lot of hypocrisy going on,” Dinklage told Maron. “Literally no offense to anyone, but I was a little taken aback by — they were very proud to cast a Latina actress as Snow White, but you’re still telling the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
“It makes no sense to me,” he added. “Because you’re progressive in one way, but you’re still making that fucking backwards story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together, what the fuck are you doing, man?”
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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