Why Peter Dinklage was hesitant to play Tyrion on Game of Thrones

Peter Dinklage is irreplaceable as Tyrion Lannister on Game of Thrones, but he almost didn’t take the role for fear of being pigeon-holed.

For eight seasons, Game of Thrones featured a lot of stellar performances. It’s hard to say who came out of it looking the best: Emilia Clarke certainly made a case for herself with her turn as the fierce Daenerys Targaryen, and it’s hard to forget Lena Headey’s work as the conniving Queen Cersei. And the list goes on.

But in terms of essential Game of Thrones performances, perhaps the most irreplaceable is Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister. Appearing in almost every episode, Dinklage never stopped showing us new sides of this character: he was by turns funny, bitter, thoughtful, furious, vulnerable, hard, and much more. And also he was drunk a lot.

And to hear Dinklage tell it, he almost didn’t accept the role, fearful that he would be just another little person in a fantasy show. “Dwarves in these genres always have this look. My guard was up,” Dinklage told The New York Times in 2012, not long before the second season was set to air. “Not even my guard—my metal fence, my barbed wire was up. Even The Lord of the Rings had dwarf-tossing jokes in it.”

Dinklage, who is 4-foot-5 inches, is right that little people can be treated as window dressing in fantasy stories. Gimli the Dwarf from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies comes to mind. He was a beloved character, but as played by John Rhys-Davies — who is a full 6’1”, by the way — he often seemed like he was around for comic relief.

But showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss assured Dinklage that this wasn’t going to happen to Tyrion. “I had one hesitation, because of the fantasy genre, I told [Benioff] I didn’t want a really long beard and pointy shoes,” Dinklage said in a 2014 AMA. “[Benioff and Weiss] assured me this character and this world wasn’t that. They told me about his complexity, the fact that he wasn’t a hero or a villain, that he was a womanizer and a drinker, and they painted a flawed and beautiful portrait of him, so I signed on.”

And indeed, whatever you think about the way show ended, Tyrion was a meaty character with lots of layers, and playing him allowed Dinklage to land other roles in everything from X-Men: Days of Future Past to Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Game of Thrones — the acting world, even — definitely wouldn’t be the same without him.

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h/t Mental Floss