Peter #1: Dinklage

On drunken nights, celebrity profiles, and the serendipity of friendship.

If you were to find yourself in possession of the February 2004 issue of GQ, you’d find a whole lotta 2004. Like Ashton Kutcher on the cover, amid cover lines promising stories about the world’s first million-dollar car and “the 10 hippest hotels” and (yikes) “funny girl Tina Fey.” But inside, you’d find a story about Peter Dinklage. And that story—or, really, the story of that story—is why we’re here today.

Game of Thrones was still a long way off. Hell, the book series it came from was only three titles deep. If you knew Dinklage at all, it was for playing an children’s book author in Elf, or from his starring role in the 2003 indie movie The Station Agent, which had gotten him enough critical acclaim that I was able to convince my editors that I should do an actor-on-the-brink profile of the guy. Calls were made, actors were cajoled, and eventually I went off to meet Peter Dinklage for a drink in Brooklyn.

See?

The Turkey’s Nest Tavern had been around since long before white people in skinny jeans had descended on Williamsburg, and it was still his favorite spot, so that’s where we went. We sat at a table and drank beer in plastic cups. I don’t remember how many, partially because of the number and partially because it was almost 18 goddamn years ago, but it was enough that by the time we walked out into the cold October night, we’d segued out of Interview mode and into Hanging Out mode. I walked down the street with him so he could pick up some photos he’d had developed. We sat on the curb and looked through them. 

Eventually, one of us called a car.* I think it was me. When it pulled up, Peter gave me some variety of bro-hug—it could’ve been a conventional hug for all I remember, honestly—and said, “we should do this again. Tell my manager and he’ll put us in touch.” I rode back to my side of Brooklyn, a little drunk. I wrote the piece. I never reached out to his manager. And now, I think I regret it.

Everyone who’s written enough celebrity profiles can reel off the nightmares: people who didn’t want to be there; people who cut the conversation short, or maybe even never showed up; people who sat in a hotel lobby or the back of a restaurant and gave monotonous one-word answers. (This isn’t a unilateral phenomenon; I’m leaving out the nightmares that arose from self-inflicted wounds.) But everyone who’s written enough celebrity profiles can also probably talk about the time or two they walked away wondering if they’d met someone they might be friends with in another life. 

Make no mistake, both of these extremes are just that: outliers. Most of the people I’ve found myself talking to or spending time with were smart and engaging, regardless of the seeming weirdness of the circumstances. But practicing that strand of journalism, blurred and meta as it might feel today, always came with the awareness we were both there to do a job. Being in Jennifer Lopez’ house, or walking into a juice bar with Shia LaBeouf, or spending hours with Lil Wayne on his tour bus in Florida—these encounters were as inorganic as they were interesting. No matter how easily a conversation flowed, it was transactional. The trick to keeping the rapport going was to avoid calling attention to that part.

But some people and encounters unspool a little differently. Of dozens of these types of stories that I wrote over the years, I’d say it happened twice. One was with Tariq Trotter, aka Black Thought, the Roots frontman and undeniable first-ballot Hall of Fame rapper who somehow keeps getting better after 30 years in the game. Back when he was only about 15 years in, I spent the day with him as part of a XXL story. We started at his apartment, but LA being LA, we drove around for hours, bouncing from a La Brea sneaker store to a Subway in the Valley and innumerable stoplights in between. (Turkey footlong, in case you’re wondering.) Thought has never been known as a garrulous dude, but over the course of the day, the conversation got more and more candid. Some of what we talked about made it into the story, and some didn’t; it wasn’t like we were trading friendship bracelets at the end of the day, but we did get to some depth of vulnerability. I didn’t expect it, and I haven’t forgotten it.

That’s not what happened with Peter Dinklage. I don’t know if it was the orbital layer of fame that he was currently occupying, or that we were of similar age in the same city, or some more imperceptible similarity, or beer. (I know; probably beer.) Regardless of the Why, I can only say sitting on the curb and looking at his vacation photos, as with the conversation that preceded it, felt indistinguishable from doing the same thing with anyone else I knew well.

I didn’t know him well, of course. I knew him exactly as well as you can know anyone after a few reasonably unguarded hours. Which is fine—that’s exactly how friendships start. But this wasn’t a party, and he wasn’t a friend of a friend, and I wasn’t a friend of his friend. He was an actor, I was a journalist, and I was so used to the rules of engagement—rules that stretched from TV sets to London restaurants to Atlanta recording studios—that at the time I couldn’t see “reasonably unguarded” as anything but a savvy tactic.

But I do enjoy the dude’s work. So if you see him, tell him I said what’s up.

One Thing I Can’t Get Enough of This Week

🎧 Mr. Willamz, Soundkilla Mindset

I somehow hadn’t heard of Mr. Williamz until Federation Sound threw a few of his tunes into their latest dancehall podcast; walking down Grand Ave. in Oakland when they hit my ears, I must’ve looked like the confused-Nick Young meme. “Bally shoes and diamond socks / mesh marina and Casio watch”? What year is this? The London artiste’s new album, Soundkilla Mindset, is somehow even more of a mid-’80s time capsule than that outfit description: a rub-a-dub style that’s equal parts Yellowman and Super Cat over re-licks of vintage riddims like Answer and Stalag. Just because the sound is rooted firmly in the past doesn’t mean it’s solely a retro trip—but in a summer of reopening, it’s a Sunsplash of nostalgic joy. [Spotify] [Bandcamp]

* See, kids, before ridesharing, if you wanted to go somewhere within the Brooklyn/Queens submegalopolis without a multiple-transfer bus ride, your choices were limited.  Cabs were usually nowhere to be found, and if you did see one, it was generally only looking to pick up a fare back to Manhattan. So you stuck with dollar vans or your friendly neighborhood car service—in my case, Arecibo, where the dispatcher told you it would be “five minutes” no matter where you were.