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Peter Dinklage Shares His Thoughts on Game of Thrones Season 8 Backlash, Daenerys’ Heel Turn
Image Credit: HBO
Peter Dinklage reflected on the fan reaction to the final season of Game of Thrones in a new interview. Dinklage was profiled by the New Yorker and discussed the polarizing season, including the fan backlash and more. You can check out some highlights below:
On fan criticism of the final season: “Well, everybody’s always going to have an opinion, and that means an ownership. It’s like breaking up with somebody. They get upset. I can’t speak for everybody, but my feeling is they didn’t want it to end, so a lot of people got angry. I feel like what [the showrunners] Dave [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] did was extraordinary. This happens. Monsters are created. And you don’t see it coming. “We vote them into office. You look the other way. 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.”
On Daenerys’ turn to evil: “But that’s because of what was happening all along. It added up to something. There are people who’ve named their children Khaleesi. You’ve just got to maybe wait till the series finale before you get that tattoo or name your golden retriever Daenerys! I can’t help you! I’m sorry. She went mad. She was driven to that, and she’s a victim as well in terms of how she was treated. She went through it, and she came out angry, as a lot of us do.”
On if he expected that Tyrion would survive through to the end: “No. None of us did. We were all nervous when we got the scripts.”
On fans recognizing him on the street as Tyrion: “Yeah, but I’m proud of Tyrion. I’m proud of Game of Thrones. The picture-taking is a little out of hand, because that’s an invasion of privacy—people are just taking pictures without asking. But it’s all usually from a place of goodness. You want, always, to be able to feel good about anything you do being yelled at you down the street. It’s when they yell at you just randomly—that’s just living in New York.”
