John Lithgow on the Controversial Authors Roald Dahl and J. K. Rowling

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2:20This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. These past couple of weeks, I've encountered an age-old dilemma when it comes to the arts. Just recently, I went to a stunning, a stunning performance at the Metropolitan Opera of Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. For five hours, I was transported by the music and the singing, and yet all the while, I realized that the composer, Wagner, was a terrible anti-Semite, a favorite of Adolf Hitler's. And the production, ironically enough, was by Yuval Sharon, an innovator in modern opera and a Jew.

3:07Around the same time, I attended a performance of Giant, Mark Rosenblatt's new play about the life, loves, and repugnant politics of Roald Dahl. You leave the theater thinking yet again, how is it possible for such a complicated and often hateful man to produce works of literature that are invariably described as beloved? How is it possible that the same imagination, the same person that conceived James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, could also give an interview in which he said, quote, even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason. The play Giant dramatizes the scandal that erupted after Roald Dahl had written a profoundly anti-Semitic article in 1983.

3:56The play premiered in London in 2024, and it opens now on Broadway with the great actor John John Lithgow playing Roald Dahl. Dahl faces off against his American publisher, who would like him to retract those anti-Semitic remarks. And the events took place some 40 years ago, but they couldn't be more relevant today. I spoke with John Lithgow this past week. You know, you've played so many roles over time. The Roald Dahl that's on stage, that's in this play, a really beautifully crafted play, is not the portrait of a good man. And I wanted to ask, what's been your experience of playing people who are not just complicated, but arguably in their sum, are nasty pieces of work?

4:50Well, it's, I've done a lot of that. I mean, I'm a character actor, so people seek me out to play kind of unusual characters. And half the time, unusual means wretched in different ways. Do you relish that? Yes, just because I relish complication. Who are the wretches you've played? Oh, gosh. I've done three Brian De Palma villains. I played the Trinity Killer on Dexter. I've played an awful lot of hypocrites and kind of devious scoundrels. They just come to me for these roles because I'm ready to play them. Well, tell me when you first read this play and you're maybe doing some background reading as well on Roald Dahl.

5:39Yes. What did you make of his life? How do you prepare yourself to play a person with the center of the play? is his really wretched anti-Semitism. Well, I just, biographical information was very valuable, finding out all about him when he was little. That's, to me, that's a terrific way in. He grew up a sort of outsider Englishman and who wanted in. At prep school, he was badly beaten as kids were. And he suffered some appalling setbacks in his life, among them his plane crash, his solo plane crash when he was an RAF pilot in Libya, when by all rights he should have been killed by it. He was smashed to bits alone on a Libyan desert and somehow survived.

6:38But his whole life he lived in pain. Six laminectomies. Wow. His four-month-old child, boy, son, Theo, was in his pram and hit by a taxi cab in New York and grew up with severe brain damages. And his daughter, whom he completely adored, caught this variant of measles and died like that. I compiled his losses. That's an interesting word. You compiled his losses. What does that mean? In just putting together this person, everything about doing this play was figuring out what motivated him. Now, the play centers on a moment in time in 1983. Dahl is at home. He is in a kind of what seems to be a country house that's going through a construction.

7:35Yes. He's with his girlfriend. Fiance. Soon-to-be wife. Yes. With whom he's had a long affair. Yes. And he's taken time out to write a book review about the Israeli-Lebanon war, which was brutal. And obviously the issue was the PLO and the Israelis trying to chase the PLO out of Lebanon. And it's a long and horrific story. And he's written a book review that anyone's ears would read as not just critical of Israeli policy, but anti-Semitic. Am I getting it right? Yes. Well, critical, explicitly critical of Israel. But his anti-Semitism is obvious like a leaky car battery. It's just in between the lines.

8:31and in some cases just explicit. And as I understand from Jeremy Triglant's biography of Roald Dahl, that his version that he sent to the magazine, the British magazine, used the word Jew more than Israeli, and in order to kind of cover for Dahl a little bit, the editors changed it to Israeli to make it less, as it were, centered on the ethnicity and on Jews than on Israeli policy. But even that didn't do the job. Yeah. No, he betrayed his anti-Semitism. And where did that come from? Who knows where anti-Semitism or any bigotry comes from. But in playing the role, I just looked for the damage.

9:17To me, a person who suffered injury or carries demons, It just sort of manifests itself in hatred of the other. So in a sense, what you're looking for is to be at once accurate and sympathetic in the deepest human sense. I guess empathetic is a better word. Just simply trying to understand. I mean, I think the play would be unwatchable if there weren't those moments where you saw pain in Dahl. Because it would be too simplistic. It would be just hard to watch. I mean, and surely it's there. He did feel terrible grief about the loss of Olivia. He cared for his son Theo. In fact, even invented a little shent that could drain the fluid from his brain at this child.

10:16He was just obsessively caring. Now, to me, that extraordinary duality is just very compelling. When you're creating drama, that's what you look for, these contradictions. One of the aspects of this that maybe you couldn't have anticipated is that the run in London took place against the background of October 7th. and it's not as if the political atmosphere has gotten any less fraught where the Middle East or anti-Semitism is concerned now that you're in New York. Can you feel that in the room? Oh, gosh, yes. I mean, history has caught up with us in waves. When we were rehearsing a play set in 1983, but all about the events of 1982 in Beirut, that was a major incursion into Beirut once again by Israel.

11:20Here we are in the spring of 2026 doing the play for Broadway and the same thing happened. Yet another major incursion into Lebanon. So there are lines in the play where you can almost hear the audience gasp. They are so applicable to the present moment even though they're about the year 1982. I mean, there are some lines I could but will not quote, but you'll know them. You've seen the play where I say them out loud and I can just hear. Tell me one. Well, there is the very famous line that Dahl specifically told to Mike Corrin of the New Statesman. Even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason.

12:08I think it's at that point that people in the audience who didn't really know this about Dahl couldn't escape it. Yes, and anti-Semitism, the charge of anti-Semitism hangs in the air like bad weather all through the play. But that's the moment when there's a gigantic clap of thunder and everybody knows, oh my God. And it's verbatim what he did say to Mike Corrin. Mike Corrin was at our opening night last night. So, there's an ancillary subject that comes along with this play is wonderful art created by people who are not so nice. You know, we read Selene still. He was a Nazi or a fascist sympathizer.

12:59But we can – the list is unfortunately very, very long. and in recent years, Dahl's books themselves have been edited to remove offensive things about characters, race, their weight, their gender. Do you agree with that? No, no, I don't and neither do a lot of very important voices in the literary world and other worlds and in fact, they now publish two parallel versions of Roald Dahl. You can buy either the Baudelarized or the original. I think it's kind of crazy. It's completely nuts. You know, the other choice is don't read what Roald Dahl wrote. Yeah. Not to rewrite it. I mean, I suppose you'd have the same problem with Huckleberry Finn.

13:47Yeah, exactly. When you think about how compulsive and almost anal Dahl was about the placement of commas and things. Do you know, there's a famous letter that I came across in our archives, in the New Yorker archives, where he is so angry at the copy editors for excessive commas, because we use what's called the Oxford comma on the phone, the serial comma. And he says, quote, you have sprinkled commas about all over the pages as though you were putting raisins in a plum pudding. Yes. Well, God damn it, not for me. He was furious. It was a very funny letter but filled with rage. You know, Dahl can appall you, but you have to respect the fact that he took all of that fiercely, seriously.

14:42And just the fact that he has died doesn't mean you can mess around with his writing. All you can do is not buy it and not read it to your children. I sometimes watch you play these scoundrels or outsized figures, and I can just—you can feel the relish going on. So you've played Roger Ailes, the great sexual harasser and Fox chief, Bill Clinton, Winston Churchill. And let's listen to a clip of you as Churchill in The Crown. I look at you now, and I realize that the time is fast approaching for me to step down. Not because I'm unwell or unfit for office, but because you are ready. And therefore I have discharged my duty to your father.

15:41That's an actor having a great time. No, I don't remember any of that. Really? Why would that be? Well, it comes back to me, and it's wonderful to listen to, although I think my dialect is a little better now than it was then. Really? Yes, I can be critical. Of yourself? Yes. Do you not like watching your old stuff? No, actually, I, well, I'm selective. Curiously, the more acted it is, the more comfortable I am watching it. For example, what would that be? Well, I certainly love watching the Churchill episodes. I just think they're so beautifully done in every way. And the fact that I fit in with a bunch of English actors is a matter of great pride on my part.

16:26I love watching myself in Third Rock from the Sun, which is the most over-the-top, kind of disgracefully overdone comedy. But I just think it's hilarious. Somehow, the further afield I go, the more comfortable I am watching myself. Well, let's play a clip from Third Rock from the Sun. You won three Emmys and a Golden Globe for that. So let's just hear you in Third Rock from the Sun.

16:54Dick, what are you doing? I'm just working on my computer. It's not even on. Yes, it is. No, it's not. Yeah, it's just warming up. You don't know how to use a computer! Shut up! Oh, he has no idea! I am a superior being. I came to Earth on a spaceship that could fit in my pants. What am I supposed to do with technology so backwards it can't even read your thought waves? Now that, I don't remember a single phrase of that. I don't even remember the scene. That's partly why I so love watching it. Does this stuff all go out of your head? Can you remember being in World According to Garp or things that are from ages ago?

17:39Oh, yes, I remember. But not the specifics of it. I mean, I did 138 episodes of Third Rock from the Sun, and I remember about 20 of them very vividly. And I think I remember them all. But then they show up, and it's like, I don't remember doing any of this. Is it easier to be on a sitcom than it is to be, you know, in a two-and-a-half-hour play where the mood is anything but jovial at all moments? Well, on a very basic level, it's exactly the same process. Just all the logistics are very different. It was a glorious, fun six years doing that show. I led a very normal life. I worked from 10 until 4, except on Tuesdays when we performed the show at night.

18:28I was working hand in glove with this incredible team of a dozen-plus comedy writers and with this effortless ensemble of comic actors, most of them from the stage, and we had a live audience. It's like preparing a summer stock show in the course of five days and then, bam, putting it in front of the audience and listening to them laugh their heads off. Sounds like a gas. It was great. And it was also very untaxing. Every two weeks, we would have a week off for the writers to catch up. And I was home to literally cook supper for the kids at night. And I would imagine making a living. Making a life.

19:11As opposed to a play that may or may not launch. Yeah. I mean, you have to sort of ignore the whole fact of money if you want to really pursue what you want to do as an actor. When I did The Giant at the Royal Court Theater, it basically cost me about$10 ,000. But I wanted to do that more than anything else. Well, how did it cost you$10 ,000? Just, they pay you like equity minimum, which is a lot less in London than it is in New York. But London is an expensive place to live. Even though you're eventually filling sizable theaters. Well, it's like buying futures. You know what I mean? Whatever happened with Giant, I wanted to do that play and I didn't want anybody else to do it.

20:03I'm speaking with the actor John Lithgow who plays Roald Dahl in a new play called Giant This is the New Yorker Radio Hour and will continue in just a moment

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24:06This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and I'm speaking today with the actor John Lithgow. Lithgow's been one of the most respected and most successful actors working for a very long time. He won a Tony Award for his Broadway debut more than 50 years ago. And at the age of 80, he seems busier than ever and better than ever. I just saw him on Broadway playing the role of the writer Roald Dahl in Mark Rosenblatt's play, Giant. It deals with the scandal around Roald Dahl's anti-Semitism. Lithgow will also have a major role in HBO's Harry Potter series as the wizard Dumbledore. Although Lithgow has said that he has some reservations about working on a series by J.K.

24:49Rowling, whose views on trans identity have caused a great deal of criticism among many readers.

25:00I tend to think of this as the last Broadway show I will do. Just because I am 80, I signed on to play Dumbledore in the HBO Harry Potter. Which could go on for years. That will go on for years. And it's very hard to think about doing a play in between seasons because a play is a good four or five months minimum if you want to do it right. And the stars are in Lund. You have to have the energy to do that and you have to have the time to do that. And my energy is dwindling. You know, it's not as easy to learn lines as it used to be. No, of course. So the last thing I want to do ever is to disappoint you.

25:48And you just had an interview with the New York Times in which you said with some, I don't know, kind of silent sigh in the background that you're going to be asked in every interview for the rest of your career about J .K. Rowling, who obviously is the author of all the Harry Potter books. and her views on trans people, which I think to many ears can be as ugly as any prejudice around. And at the same time, you both disagree with her and you've chosen to take this on. Tell me a little bit about that. Well, it's, I mean, the great big large project of doing another version of Harry Potter is basically retelling wonderful stories that Rowling created.

26:42And they are very stirring stories. I think there's reasons why they've resonated with young people and young people have grown up and are still obsessed with Harry Potter. Dumbledore is a wonderful role. Doing it in England with like half the crew worked on The Crown. There was everything attractive about the job and job security into my late years. You know, you don't ignore those issues. The whole subject of Rowling's imputed prejudice, it came up sort of after everything was already underway. I'd already said yes and it really would have been. So this is quite a while ago. It was quite a while ago.

27:28I would have had – I was urged to walk away and I was not about to do that. And I also – I'm not judging at all, but tell me why you decided not to walk away. I just felt the reasons to do it were much, much stronger than the reasons to protest against what Rowling has done and said. I do disagree with much of it. much of it I think has been twisted and misrepresented and she has sort of doubled down on it to her own at her own cause what surprises me with her sometimes is the ferocity and even I have to say cruelty in the tone with which she sometimes it's usually transmitted by Twitter or some form of social media yeah I'm surprised by it too and disappointed by it You meet her?

28:24Did you meet her? I have not met her. The other positive on the Harry Potter project is the people who have taken it on themselves. Francesca Gardner and Mark Mylod are this extraordinary partnership who first worked together on Succession. Francesca grew up adoring the Harry Potter canon. Right. And she persuaded me. I mean, she was the big reason why I took it on. In many ways, it's a crazy thing to do. Why is that? Because I will still be playing Dumbledore when I'm 88 years old. If I last that long. And it does rule out an awful lot else in my life. And it's a huge dislocation. My wife and I have to spend, well, have to.

29:14We will now spend about two-thirds of every year in London. Which you regret? It's difficult. I love London. I've worked there and studied there many, many times over the years, so I know it well. Your kids are grown? My kids are grown, but we have grandkids, little grandkids and teenage grandkids. And it's hard to be away from them. Did your kids like watching you in movies or on the stage? Or did they run away from it? I'm curious. They don't talk about it much. They would much rather just be my major role should be their father. You get the sense that they would have preferred that you were a certified public accountant?