Fantasy World

Jamie Dornan and Peter Dinklage star in an absorbing drama about the colourful life of Herve Villechaize.

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When the British journalist Sacha Gervasi was sent to interview actor Hervé Villechaize in 1993, he had assumed it would be a routine piece about the star’s previous roles in James Bond movie The Man with the Golden Gun and TV show Fantasy Island.

Instead, the two men spent an eventful week in LA, talking about Villechaize’s fascinating story. ‘He poured out his life to me over these meetings,’ Gervasi recalls. ‘It was a massive emotional experience.’

PERSONAL PROJECT

The interview took on even greater significance when, a few days later, Villechaize committed suicide. Gervasi immediately made a pledge to make a drama about their meetings to honour the actor’s memory.

Now, 25 years later, he has finally achieved his goal, with the feature-length drama My Dinner with Hervé, shown on Sky Atlantic this week, starring Game of Thrones’ Peter Dinklage as the diminutive French actor, and The Fall’s Jamie Dornan as Irish journalist and former alcoholic Danny Tate, a character loosely based on Gervasi.