Actor Peter Dinklage blasted the cancel culture for attacking him for portraying Hervé Villechaize in the 2018 film My Dinner with Hervé.
The Game of Thrones star spoke of the criticism of his role as the actor who famously intoned “The plane, the plane,” as Ricardo Montalbán’s sidekick on the 1970s TV series Fantasy Island.
Both Dinklage and Villechaize were born with dwarfism, but for many detractors, Dinklage’s size was not the issue. It was his race.
Dinklage blasted the critics in an interview with the Awards Chatter podcast, saying the “politically correct” attackers were actually “politically wrong” for saying he should not have been cast to portray the famed TV star.
Villechaize, who famously appeared as Bond villain Nick Nack in the 1974 film, Man with the Golden Gun, went on greater fame as Fantasy Island’s Tattoo. But many fans were under the misapprehension that the diminutive star was Filipino or Asian. Dinklage, being an American, should not play someone of Asian heritage, they claimed.
“Everyone started being a little critical,” Dinklage told the podcast, according to Mediaite.
“I think people have to be very careful,” Dinklage added. “In trying to be politically correct, they were politically wrong. People who were trying to be politically correct judged Hervé because of how he looked. Hervé was not Filipino, he had a form of dwarfism that gave him a certain outward appearance. Hervé Villechaize was French.”
“Until you sit down with the brother of the man who you’re playing, who is not Filipino, who’s French, and have a laugh about how crazy the world is in assuming because of how someone looks, they judge of what they must be, and here we are making a movie all about judging how you look,” Dinklage continued.
“But people who thought they were doing the right thing were doing the exact same thing. We had a few laughs about that,” he concluded.
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