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

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This 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 Undezolda.

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 out-of-hitlers.

And the production, ironically enough,

was by Yuval Sharon,

an innovator in Modern Opera and a Jew.

Around the same time, I attended a performance of Giant,

Mark Rosenblatt's new play about the life,

loves, and repugnant politics of rolled doll.

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 Roll Doll had written a profoundly anti-Semitic article in 1983.

The play premiered in London in 2024

and it opens now on Broadway

with the great actor John Lithgow playing Roll Doll.

Doll 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 roll doll that's on stage,

that's in this play, 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?

Well, 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.

Tell me when you first read this play

and you're maybe doing some background reading as well on roll doll doll.

Yes.

What did you make of his life?

How do you prepare yourself to play a person

with the center of the play?

Is this really wretched anti-semitism?

Well, biographical information was very valuable,

finding out all about him when he was little.

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.

By all rights, he should have been killed by it.

He was smashed to bits alone on a Libyan desert

and somehow survived,

but his whole life he lived in pain.

Six laminectomies.

His four-month-old child, a 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.

Yeah, well, 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.

Dal is at home.

He is in a kind of what seems to be a country house.

It's going through a construction.

Yes.

He's with his girlfriend,

soon to be wife,

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.

And some, in some cases, just explicit.

And as I understand from Jeremy Trigland's biography

of role Dal,

that his version that he sent to the magazine,

the British magazine,

used the word Jew more than Israeli

in order to kind of cover for Dal 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.

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 to me,

a person who suffered injury

or carries demons.

It just manifests itself

in hatred of the other.

So 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 Dal.

Because it'd 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,

he 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 an major incursion into Beirut,

once again, by Israel.

Here 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 on I can just hear.

Tell me one.

Well, there's the very famous line

that Dolls specifically told

to Mike Korn of the New Statesman.

Even a stinker like Hitler

didn't just pick on them for no reason.

I think it's at that point

that people in the audience

who didn't really know this about Doll

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, he...

And it's verbatim what he did say to Mike Korn.

Mike Korn was at our opening night last night.

It'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 saline still.

He was a Nazi or a fascist sympathizer.

But the list is unfortunately very, very long.

And in recent years,

Dolls 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 Roll Doll.

You can buy either the bowed-larized or the original.

I think it's going to be crazy.

It's completely nuts.

You know, the other choices don't read

what Roll Doll wrote.

I mean, I suppose you'd have the same problem

with Huckleberry Finn or...

Yeah, exactly.

When you think about how compulsive

and almost anal doll was

about the placement of commas and things.

Do you know, there's a famous letter

that I came across in our archives

and 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.

And he says,

you have sprinkled commas

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 funny letter.

And filled with rage.

You know, Doll can appall you,

but you have to respect the fact

that he took all of that fiercely,

seriously, and 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 has lost approaching

for me to step down.

Not because I'm unwell or unfit for office,

but because of you,

I read it.

And therefore I have

discharged my duty to your father.

That's a doctor having a great time.

I don't remember any of that.

Really?

Well, it comes back to me,

and it's wonderful to listen to you,

although I think my dialect

is a little better now than it was.

Really?

Yes, I can be critical of yourself.

Do you not like watching your old stuff?

Actually, well, I'm selective.

Curiously, the more acted it is,

the more comfortable I am watching.

For example, we'll be happy.

Well, I certainly love watching the Churchill episodes.

I 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.

I love watching myself

in Third Rock from the Sun,

which is the most over-the-top.

It is kind of disgracefully overdone and comedy,

but I just think it's hilarious.

Somehow, the further a field I go,

the more comfortable I am watching myself.

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.

Dick, what are you doing?

I'm just working on my computer.

It's not even on.

I guess it is.

No, it's not.

Yeah, it's just warming up.

You don't know how to use a computer!

Oh, he is 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 my eyes.

I still love watching it.

Does this stuff all go out of your head?

Can you remember being in World According to Garp?

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 ten until four, except on Tuesdays when we performed the show at night.

I 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 guess.

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.

As 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 Theatre, it basically cost me about ten grand.

But I will want to do that more than anything else.

Well, how did it cost you ten grand?

They pay you equity minimum, which is a lot less in London than it is in New York.

But London is an expensive place.

Even though you're eventually feeling sizable theaters.

Well, it's like buying futures.

Whatever happened with giant, I wanted to do that play.

And I didn't want anybody else to do it.

I'm speaking with the actor John Lithgow, who plays role doll in a new play called Giant.

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This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'm David Rammnick,

and I'm speaking today with the actor, John Lithgo.

Lithgo has 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, Roll Doll,

in Mark Rosenblatt's play, Giant.

It deals with the scandal around Roll Doll's anti-semitism.

Lithgo will also have a major role in HBO's Harry Potter series,

as the wizard Dumbledore.

Although, Lithgo has said that he has some reservations

about working on a series by JK Rowling,

whose views on trans identity have caused a great deal of criticism among many readers.

I tend to think of this as the last Broadway show I will do,

just because I am 80.

I've signed on to play Dumbledore in the HBO Harry Potter.

Which could go on for...

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 I simply...

And the stars are in line.

You have to have the energy to do that,

and you have to have the time to do that.

And my energy is dwindling.

It's not as easy to learn lines.

It's used to be.

No, of course.

So the last thing I want to do ever is to disappoint you,

and 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 JK Rowling,

who obviously is the author of all the Harry Potter books,

and her views on trans people,

which I think to many years 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.

And they are...

They're very stirring stories.

I think there's reasons why they've resonated with young people,

and the 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...

This is quite a while ago.

It was quite a while ago.

I 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.

If you 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's happening with Harry Potter 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 mean it? Did you mean it?

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 Milaud are this extraordinary partnership

who first worked together on succession.

Francesca grew up adoring the Harry Potter canon,

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.

We will now spend about two-thirds of every year in London.

Would you regret her?

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.

It's just a game.

It's like watching you in movies or on the stage.

They don't run away from it.

It's curious.

They don't talk about it much.

They would much rather be my major role.

It should be their father.

You get the sense that they would have preferred that you were a certified public account?

No, no.

I think, look, I'm second generation myself.

You have a parent who's involved in the business of storytelling and fantasy,

and their parts of their brain are always somewhere else.

And that's...

And you can feel it when they were growing up,

that tension between your brain being on them or your focus being on them?

Well, you would have to ask them.

But I think it was hard for them on many occasions, and I was away a lot.

I remember somebody interviewing John Updike.

I guess he was in his 70s at this point.

And they asked me a very straightforward question.

They said, John, you've written 50, 60 books, whatever it was at that point.

What if it...

Do you think will last?

What is your assessment of what's the best of it?

And I wonder if you...

If I asked you that question, could you answer it?

I don't think any actor is much remembered after 20, 40 years.

I mean, you can...

It broke my heart one day on the set of Third Rock from the Sun when we referred to Carrie Grant.

And Joe Gordon Levitt said, who's that?

It's like, wow.

I mean, we write on water, which is all right.

I mean, what I do is what I love theater.

Why I love theater primarily is because I'm telling the story at the very moment they're experiencing it.

And that electrical connection is what's so exciting.

That's what you're after.

You know, they say, well, movies go on forever.

They don't.

There's a cell by date.

Even the movie...

Well, you know, there are the roles that I feel were mine and mine alone.

Like, nobody else could touch me.

And Roberto Maldon in Dick Solomon in Third Rock from the Sun.

You can't imagine anybody else playing that role.

I feel that way about role doll.

I mean, it is a wonderful feeling to know, I own this one.

This is my role.

It was almost invented for me.

That's a great feeling.

But you're also kidding yourself.

When you brag about that to people.

Because you think 50 years from now, 25 years from now, somebody's going to play the very same role.

Yeah.

Somebody will do a revival.

And it doesn't.

It's fine.

I completely accept that I will have long, long since passed my cell by date.

John Lithgow, thank you so much.

Of course, it's great to talk to you, David.

The play giant, starring John Lithgow, is on Broadway.

And you could read more about the play at New Yorker.com, including a terrific piece by the drama critic,

John Lar, who profiles the playwright.

And you can subscribe to the New Yorker there as well, New Yorker.com.

I'm David Remnick, and that's our program for today.

Thanks for listening.

See you next time.

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