Thrones actor feels the pressure of success
Dinklage fears show will become overly epic
Game of Thrones has the look of a conquering king right now — HBO renewed the series for a third season just two weeks after the Season 2 opener earned glowing reviews and posted a gaudy 77 per cent increase over last April’s series premiere. But one of the stars, Peter Dinklage, says any success is a double-edged sword.
When asked what challenges lie ahead for the Game of Thrones team, the 42-year-old actor said he sees them coming from several directions, including the most passionate fans of the show.
Specifically, the Emmy and Golden Globe winner said he frets a bit about the relentless Internet drumbeat of fantasy fans who want the medieval epic to be more epic.
“There’s so much pressure to, in terms of this genre, make it bigger,” Dinklage said. “There’s all this talk about, ‘We want more battles!’ And there’s so many fan sites. And the show is based on a very successful series of novels (by George R.R. Martin) and so there was so much anticipation for it — and so much pressure put on it. You can’t really listen to all of that if you’re going to be successful. It’s just too much to take in, too much to take on. You have to block all of that out and tell the really smart story that was told by George and not try to take on too much that takes the (priorities) in other directions.”
It’s hard to find many diehard fantasy fans who don’t love scale and sprawl — one of the defining hallmarks of epic fantasy is the immersive experience of visiting a place like Middle-earth, Narnia, Hogwarts or the Dark Tower, where things are not just strange and magical but also ancient and immense.
Thrones certainly nods to that, too, with plenty of time spent at the colossal landmark called the Wall, an 8,000-year-old barrier of ice at the grim northern border of the Seven Kingdoms. But Dinklage also knows that characters and the fascinating physics of family and power have made Thrones the must-see show that it is, which is why he’s leery of anything that would shift emphasis from words to wars. For that reason, Dinklage sounds conflicted even about HBO’s decision to add 15 per cent to the Thrones production budget.
“I think more money can be very detrimental to movies and TV because things get solved economically rather than creatively and that’s never a good solution,” the New Jersey native said. “I think with a lot of filmmakers, their first film is their best film because they had to think on their feet and solve problems with ingenuity. The more money there is, too, the more cooks you have in the kitchen and suddenly you have 20 producers showing up on the set and you don’t know who they are or what they even do.”
Those are the experiences Dinklage brings in from his film work — his feature credits include Elf, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and The Station Agent — but he’s not hitting the fire alarm on Thrones. “Look, the way we just shot the second season and the way it went, I think we’re keeping the right things in mind. Things are going along swimmingly. I think, though, we always have to keep (the eagerness to expand) in check.”
The second-season finale of Thrones last weekend drew in a series high 4.2 million viewers, 38 per cent improved over last season’s finale, suggesting these are sunny days in the Seven Kingdoms, but even Dinklage reminds viewers that, for every series, winter is coming at some point.
“With a lot of shows, they start off really well and they’re very original, but they become sort of a version of themselves,” Dinklage said.