Peter Dinklage still stands behind the end of Game of Thrones: "I like the finale!"

Actor Peter Dinklage has appeared in shows and movies aplenty over the years, but around here we'll always know him best as Tyrion Lannister, the wise-cracking, cynical nobleman from Game of Thrones. Dinklage is out on the press trail to promote his new Western movie The Thicket, which is out now in select theaters and coming soon to Tubi. And while Dinklage's rugged cowboy character Reginald Jones sounds pretty far from Tyrion ("I love that he’s not, like, a wordsmith. He just knows what needs to be done," Dinklage says), the actor's name still calls to mind Game of Thrones for many people.

As Rolling Stone pointed out in a new interview with Dinklage, he's still introduced on talk shows like Jimmy Kimmel with a mention of his Game of Thrones role even though the series ended more than five years ago. Does it bother Dinklage to still have that public attachment?

"When you do a Rolling Stone cover, you make your bed, man," Dinklage joked. "It would be very difficult if I wasn’t proud of that show, but I happen to be insanely proud of that show. I love that character. And I’m still good friends with and I love the creators, David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss]. It was about 10 years of our lives from the first time they told me about it to when we wrapped the final season. I raised two kids part time over in Ireland. There’s no shame in that. There’s only pride. And it was eight seasons. So that’s 80 hours of me! Everybody globally, everybody got 80 hours of Dinklage … It’s bound to follow me around."

That pride extends beyond the overall experience to the ending of the series itself. Back in 2021, Dinklage stirred the fandom pot when he said that he stood behind the show's divisive final episode. A few years later, does he still feel that way?

"I like the finale!" he said. "You don’t have to agree with me. How about if I said like, 'Yeah, I agree. I hated the finale. The whole last season was horrible'?  I mean, that would sit much worse than if I said I loved it, which I did. I can’t speak for anybody else’s opinion, and that’s what makes what we do fun, because everybody does have a difference of opinion and everybody gets to write about it and chat about it and drink over it and argue about it. It’s great. I mean, I think it means you’re doing something right. It’s like an old Irish way of looking at the world. There’s something wrong if everything’s OK.[Laughs.]"

That strikes me as a pretty level-headed way to look at it. Some of the responses to the final season of Game of Thrones got pretty out there, so it's no surprise Dinklage doesn't want to wade into it. Rolling Stone points out that there were even some pretty unhinged takes where viewers got upset over a joke the show made in its final moments, when Samwell Tarly suggests the realm take up democracy instead of a monarchy and gets laughed at by the lords and ladies of the Seven Kingdoms. Apparently, some people took that as a literal jab at the idea of democratic institutions, which Dinklage found just as absurd as it sounds.

"Yeah, no. By the way, that was all filmed after Trump was elected. We were on set in Spain when Trump was elected. We were saying those lines and I was like, 'Holy smokes. Yikes.'" he said. "Whether [democracy] works or not, the idea of it is still very strong and should be respected."

Peter Dinklage says Game of Thrones ended at a "good time"

So you heard it from Dinklage himself: don't expect him to come out shading the ending of Thrones, because it ain't happening. He also reflected on how the series bowed out at the right time.

"I mean, it was sad, but I didn’t really have anxiety, because at that point we were all ready to move on," he recalled. "For any sort of creative type, especially with what we do, we want to mix it up. The good thing about that show was the actors had quite a bit of time off between seasons. It was like half the year with Thrones, half the year off. You could do other things on your time off, if you were lucky to be engaged in other creative things, which I chose to be. And then by the time it was done, you don’t want to overstay your welcome with anything — a party, a TV show. So I think it was really time. There are some people who probably wanted to keep going with it on the financial end of things, ’cause we were doing very well for HBO. But creatively, it was a good time for everybody to move on from it."

Dinklage says the fate of The Toxic Avenger is "out of my hands"

Whether you best remember Dinklage as Tyrion or not, he's got plenty else going on at the moment. He also addressed his movie The Toxic Avenger, which is currently in limbo without any sort of release date even though it's finished and has gotten a warm reception at film festivals. The gossip on the street is that the film's producers have deemed it "unreleasable," saying that it's "too niche" for a widespread release. But Dinklage has a lot of positive things to say about the film, and film festival audiences apparently went wild for it. It currently has a 92% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

"It’s such a great movie. I saw a rough cut of it. I absolutely loved it. It’s so original, even though it’s a spin on an old Eighties cult movie," Dinklage said. "It’s so much fun and it’s over-the-top violence. Everybody that’s seen it, like the festival in Austin, Texas, all freaked out for it. They loved it. It’s out of my hands. It’s with the companies and what they choose to do with it. You work so hard on something, especially with good friends, and you don’t know what the fate of it’s gonna be. But I guess you just gotta move on. Hopefully it will be released. I hope so. Because it’s really fun, people really like it."

Catch Peter Dinklage in The Thicket, now playing in select theaters

As for his current movie, The Thicket, that one you can see now! Dinklage plays a rough and tumble bounty hunter named Reginald Jones, opposite Yellowjackets' Juliette Lewis. It's based on a novel by Joe Lansdale, a longtime friend and collaborator of none other than George R.R. Martin, the creator of Game of Thrones. Even when Dinklage isn't in Thrones, he's still connected to it. Martin wrote about a screening of The Thicket held at his theater in Santa Fe on his blog just like week, praising the movie.

"The Santa Fe audience seemed to like the film, as did I," Martin wrote. "It’s a western, but the sort of western only Joe could write, dark and twisty and filled with a cast of colorful characters. Dinklage and Lewis were both excellent. If you’re a fan of the Old West, be sure and catch THE THICKET when it turns up at a cinema near you."

For Dinklage, The Thicket is fulfilling a wish he's held for a while. "I never took a crack at a Western," he said. "I always wanted to. I love them."

The Thicket is currently playing in theaters. No streaming release date has yet been announced.

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