From the start of his career, Peter Dinklage has always challenged stereotypes about people with dwarfism. In his first screen appearance, in the 1995 indie comedy Living in Oblivion, he played an actor furiously railing against filmmakers who cast him in a lazy dream sequence. The award-winning actor can currently be seen in a revamped musical version of Cyrano de Bergerac. And he’s using his press tour to, among other things, point out that such laziness is still in full effect.
On his recent appearance on Marc Maron’s podcast WTF (as caught by Variety), Dinklage — who has no qualms about calling people out — tore into one of Disney’s next live-action remakes, namely the one for the company’s first feature-length film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It stars West Side Story‘s Rachel Zegler, which is a big get for Latinx representation. But so far they have yet to announce if they’re doing anything with the seven gentlemen who come to her aid.
“There’s a lot of hypocrisy going on,” Dinklage told Maron. “Literally no offense to anyone, but I was a little taken aback when they were very proud to cast a Latina actress as Snow White. But you’re still telling the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Take a step back and look at what you’re doing there. It makes no sense to me.”
He went on:
“You’re progressive in one way but then you’re still making that f*cking backwards story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together, what the fuck are you doing, man? Have I done nothing to advance the cause from my soap box? I guess I’m not loud enough. I don’t know which studio that is but they were so proud of it. All love and respect to the actress and all the people who thought they were doing the right thing. But I’m just like, what are you doing?”
Again, Disney has yet to reveal more details about how extensively they’re reworking the movie that eight-and-a-half decades ago made the company bigger than all its animation house rivals. Dinklage said he’d love if they put some “f*cked-up, cool or progressive spin on it.” They may do the latter but Disney is probably not the company to do “cool,” let alone “f*cked up.”
(Via Variety)
